The Kigali Genocide Memorial has been nominated for the first edition of the inaugural Africa Architecture Awards due to take place on September 28.

On Thursday, the organisers, South African Saint-Gobain Group, announced a shortlist of 20 projects for a trophy in either the built, speculative, emerging voices or critical dialogue categories, or the overall Grand Prix award.

The main award is worth $10,000.

According to a press release, there were 139 entries in the Built category, 91 entries in the Speculative category, 44 entries in the Emerging Voices category and 34 entries in the Critical Dialogue category.

The memorial designed by Mass Design Group belongs to the Speculative category.

The Africa Architecture Awards, explains Evan Lockhart-Barker, the Managing Director of the Saint-Gobain Retail Business Development Initiative, "have been established to highlight the continent’s innovative and collaborative style of solving problems – architectural or otherwise.”

"Saint-Gobain has engaged with some of the best minds in the field to establish this programme, so that the awards are relevant, contextual and progressive. We are more than thrilled to see the response that the competition has received to date.”

The winners in each of the four categories, and the overall grand prize, will be announced at a gala awards ceremony to be held at the newly opened Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) in Cape Town.

The architects of each of the 20 shortlisted projects will be flown to Cape Town by Saint-Gobain to attend the awards ceremony, which will be held on September 28, 2017.

More than 500 projects registered to enter the awards before the closing date of July 14, 2017, and a total of 307 projects from 32 African countries, completed the registration process and qualified to enter.

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