Yaama is a village in the semi-desert region of Niger. Even after more than 60 years of French colonization (which ended in 1960), the area is remarkably untouched by outside influence. So when the village decided in 1962 to build a Friday Mosque in which everyone could gather for prayers they chose to use traditional methods: everyone made a contribution, from the landowner who donated the site, to the people who made mud bricks, carried the water and gathered wood.

The first version of this mud brick Friday mosque, begun in 1962, took the form of a rectangular hypostyle prayer hall with the projecting Mihrab as the only secondary volume. In subsequent repairs a central dome was added and four corner towers built. Initially, the mosque was a simple, severe hypostyle hall with the column spacing determined by the spatial demands of kneeling worshippers. In 1975-1976, the original roof structure was replaced by a series of bentwood vaults covered in mud (a method not traditional to the region but adapted from models seen by Barmou on his pilgrimage across Africa to Mecca) (Method mostly used in Yemen). At the same time, one of the columns was removed to allow a more or less central dome to be constructed over a clearing among the forest of hypostyle columns.

In 1978, towers were built at the four corners and in the next few years galleries were built between them. Each tower is an individual sculpture with banded tapering walls becoming gradually more elaborate toward its pinnacle. Crenellations of half circles decorate the parapets and rounded cones mark the corners. Mud brick structures require cyclical maintenance, alterations and repairs. For the Yama mosque this activity was from the beginning an act of religious devotion in which the entire community participates, and so it continues to be. 

Everyone contributes to the caretaking of the mosque in proportion to his or her ability to do so. Some make mud bricks; others carry them to the building site. Women carry water for brick and mortar production while others cut and gather wood. The jury commended the "manifest will to use traditional techniques in a creative manner, to experiment with them and to achieve results that induce a new awareness of their possibilities."