Moyo Ogunseinde
This multihyphenate talent has built her brand, Àga Culture, on five Yoruba principles: ayo (joy), ife (love), inurere (kindness), alaafia (peace), and okan bale (calmness). “Our purpose is to celebrate Africa—past, present, and future,” she says. “You should feel these values in all that we create.” Ogunseinde, who also works as an architect and real estate developer, launched Àga in 2017 as a platform for design. Current highlights include Oko seats, inspired by farming hoes, and exuberant Mmanwu lounge chairs, homages to Igbo masquerade costumes made from handwoven asoke cloth. The works, all produced by artisans across Nigeria, fill Àga’s Victoria Island boutique in the Radisson Blu Anchorage Hotel. (She’s pictured with examples on the hotel’s terrace.) Nigeria’s rich history and this city’s frenetic dynamism continue to inform all of her work. “There is a cultural energy in Lagos that you can’t find anywhere else.” agaculture.com
Patrick Koshoni
When Koshoni converted his family’s Victoria Island compound into the beloved members’ lounge Mìlíkì (Yoruba slang for “milk”) in 2013, he didn’t expect it to become the epicenter of the city’s creative cognoscenti. “I just wanted to provide like-minded individuals with a respite from the daily Lagos hustle, an oasis where people could truly chill and catch their mental breath,” says Koshoni (pictured above at the vibrant hangout). He succeeded. Everything at the lounge, from its vintage posters to its hand-carved Malian doors, was commissioned, created, or painstakingly handpicked by Koshoni, a self-taught architect and interior designer who has consulted on restaurants, fashion boutiques, and galleries. Before opening Mìlíkì, he ran an African-arts-and-crafts shop in London, followed by a contemporary-furniture store in Lagos. It’s hard work, but easy roads are “seldom worth it,” Koshoni states before quoting Nigerian author Chinua Achebe: “Being a Nigerian is abysmally frustrating and unbelievably exciting.” miliki.ng
