Before now, historiographies and archival accounts of African innovations have often been told from mainly a Western and Eurocentric perspective. This chapter aims to expand this argument. It does this through a philosophical appraisal of the trajectory of progression in the traditional architectural designs and building technologies in the pre-colonial Vhavenda communities. This means exploring the scientific bases behind the progression of the different shapes and forms of the architectural designs and the building technology in the traditional Vhavenda communities. What counts is not whether these progressions have followed a Eurocentric notion of science, but rather unearthing the local rationale within which they are justified, and are hence ought to be regarded as “science.” Following these objectives, two questions are very important: (1) What are the major changes in the traditional Vhavenda architectural designs and building infrastructures? (2) How are these changes justified within the Vhavenda indigenous knowledge system?

The 21st century has witnessed that climate change has become an acute daily agony. In Africa, to be specific, it has made the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals a myth. It is argued that the implications of climate change are evident in numerous ways on the African continent: incessant floods, cyclones, droughts, and heat waves. These have introduced disastrous outcomes: a heightened threat of food security, inadequate water resource availability, diminished biodiversity, decline in human health viability, and increasing land degradation. At the centre of all this, a more robust understanding of climate change and appropriate palliatives is called for. In South Africa, conservation by the state and numerous stakeholders on the thorny issue of climate change has tended to favour and privilege Western scientific interpretations at the expense of the “indigenous” interpretations as informed by their indigenous epistemologies.