The architect's active, creative temperament (combined with the natural garrulousness that keeps him constantly chatting with construction workers and waitresses) makes him well suited to the business of opening up new offices in foreign countries and jetting off to client meetings in Trinidad and Shanghai. Still, the growth of Adjaye's practice isn't just a matter of expanding his business, but a key part of his broader cultural project. Particularly important are the host of new commissions afoot in Africa, and the Accra office he recently opened to pursue them. "The growth of African countries"— between 8 and 15 percent of GDP in some economies, he notes—"has created a new confidence on the continent," and Adjaye is looking to tap into it. Adjaye sees the continent as fertile soil for exactly the kind of high-design, iconic new architecture he's creating in Washington, and with no other "starchitect"-caliber office between Johannesburg and Cairo, he's effectively first on the scene. Adjaye isn't just bringing Africa to the world—he's bringing the world to Africa.

Africa, it seems, is ready. "Already, you find that people are sort of looking outward a little more, wanting more than they've had previously," says interior designer Reni Folawiyo. She recently commissioned the architect to design her new concept store, Alara, set to debut later this year in Lagos, Nigeria. The building's translucent screens seem a nod to the brises soleils of African modernist buildings, like those of British architect Maxwell Fry, while their patterning plainly connotes the geometries of African textiles. Configured as a series of open volumes, the building suggests the same clustered, communal feel as one of Adjaye's new public libraries in Washington, D.C. And the concept store is only the beginning. Among his ongoing projects in sub-Saharan Africa is the master plan for a new 500,000-square-foot resort in Princes Town, Ghana, only a couple miles from the seaside fortifications where Europeans once traded for slaves bound for the New World.