Understanding the traditional kitchen space in a gendered Zimbabwean society for sustainable development in a troubled Mother Earth

This study is centred on Sustainable Development Goals SDGs (especially goal number 11 focusing on sustainable communities), Mother Earth, pandemics and religion using gender lenses. It examines the African built environment in rural communities with a special focus on Shona people’s traditional kitchen hut which is owned and managed by women. Though there are some changes, the traditional preferred building style in the Shona cosmology is that they are usually round, with a grass thatched peaked roof. This architectural design has come under attack from praise singers of modernisation, who argue that the architectural design and material used are now backward. It is against this backdrop that the scope of the problem in this research hinges on the effect of the gendering of architectural design of the traditional kitchen hut and its religiousness on sustainable societies in relation to Mother Earth. Using secondary sources, this qualitative study adopts interpretive approach in examining how the traditional kitchen is resiliently capable of responding to, and accommodative to a wide range of climatic changes. This makes it ecologically responsive to Mother Earth. A circular economy (CE) as a conceptual framework is recommended by this study to reclaim the sacred traditional kitchen hut prototype of infrastructure for women space in line with SDGs under adverse climatic conditions.