Mokena Makeka directs Makeka Design Lab, an international award-winning Architecture practice. He has advised the SA Minister of Human Settlements, sat on the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council for Design, and is the winner of the Gold Loerie Award for Communication Design in 2011. He is adjunct professor at GSAPP, Columbia University in New York, and the WITS 2014 Resident Equity Scholar in the School of architecture and planning. He has served on the South African Creative Industries Federation.

Career highlights include being selected as one of the Ordos 100 architects, only two selected from Africa by Hertzog and De Meuron . He has served on the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council for Design. . He is published as a contributor in: Sustainable Waters Handbook, Transport and Mobility Handbook, Counter Currents: Experiments in Sustainability in Cape Town (African Centre for Cities), in addition to numerous articles and papers on topics ranging across: sustainability, urban culture, transport and urban design, planning theory and African urbanism.

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