The African Development Bank (AfDB) Group’s mission is to help reduce poverty, improve living conditions for Africans and mobilize resources for the continent’s economic and social development. With this objective in mind, the institution aims at assisting African countries – individually and collectively - in their efforts to achieve sustainable economic development and social progress. The AfDB approached Liquid Light with a brief to reinvigorate and improve their existing site to reflect the quality of what they do and to provide an efficient communication platform. They wanted a natural home for the content with a fresh and vibrant feel. Due to the vast nature of AfDB it was critical to ensure that the widely divergent stakeholder groups were kept happy whilst also being conscious of the broad range of audience needs. It was a challenge incorporating the different voices of the organisation into an intelligent architecture that would improve the internal work flow. From a design perspective, there was an interesting challenge of creating something that would represent the richness of the vast African continent whilst also reflecting the modern corporate image, capturing it’s positive energetic philosophy. The result is an elegant site with a vibrant balance between a corporate edge with the African energy. The large intelligent architecture of the site allows visitors to simply browse by a wide range of options to access the huge repository of documents. Multiple countrywide teams are able to manage the content through a Typo3 based content management system. Liquid Light have been able to work in a vibrant environment with people that are passionate about what they are doing. Through the design process it was rewarding for the Liquid Light team to uncover one voice within the vast organization, which was not previously apparent. The site acts as a benchmark for effective and positive change for other African institutions to offer a greater degree of transparency.
