Page 18 - Landscape-Issue123

PROJECT

Stone walls were built to reduce the site’s gradient. They have also helped to
ensure that the river is more accessible.

Information board for the ALA’s water sustainability project. The Living Machine
is a sustainable waste water treatment system, recycling grey water for use in an
aquaponic system and providing water for agricultural crops and irrigation.

The reshaped and stepped stream met NLA’s morphological requirements

Floodline determination for the degraded and overgrown floodplain.
PHOTO BY CHRIS BROOKER

• design considerations including: minimising the flood risk to the
existing buildings on the right bank of the water course; limiting More about the ALA
the step height to allow upstream migration of aquatic organisms, The academy seeks young people on the continent with
especially during spate flows; ensuring an aesthetically pleasing the potential for leadership and students are involved in the
finished product with minimal obvious ‘engineering’; practice of leadership through applied learning to stimulate
• design of the new pedestrian bridge; their intellectual growth. The academy enables access to
• design of the waterway gate at the downstream end of the site; and networks of opportunity and resources that will enable their
• design of the brick paved driveway. further growth, learning and impact.

Water sustainability project The ALA believes that the fundamental root cause of Africa’s
On the campus, the Living Machine is a sustainable wastewater challenges is an undersupply of leadership, and through
treatment system with capacity to clean 300 000 litres of water annually. its various programmes, it engages the tools of critical
Designed by two students at the Academy – Jesse Forrester from Kenya inquiry and experiential learning to develop a generation
and Wuntia Gomda from Ghana, it was constructed on the campus and of entrepreneurial leaders for Africa and the world. Since
commissioned in December 2019. opening in 2008, more than 1300 young leaders from 46
African countries have studied at the ALA.
The system ensures that the campus is more environmentally friendly
by recycling grey water and re-using it in an aquaponic system growing For more information visit https://africanleadershipacademy.org/
fish, providing water for agricultural crops planted on the campus and
supplying water for the site’s irrigation system. n

16 Landscape SA • Issue 123 2023