Development and Promotion of Bamboo Housing Technology in East Africa
Introduction:
With an average urbanization rate of 3.5% per annum, slums in Africa are emerging as a dominant and distinct type of settlement in many cities across the continent. This raises severe development challenges, with slum housing often being unsafe, unhygienic, overcrowded, and built to sub-par standards. In Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda, the project’s target countries, urban slum generation is a particularly pressing problem. For example, in Ethiopia, the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) 4 estimates 75% of the urban population lives in inhuman, unhygienic, and confined spaces, while, in Kenya and Uganda, the current annual housing deficits are 100,000 and 500,000 units respectively. Therefore, there is a vital need to identify and develop alternative, sustainable, safe, and affordable building materials to meet the current housing crisis. Given this situation, this project aimed to assess the potential of local bamboo resources to provide an alternative, sustainable, safe, and affordable building material in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda.
The project team decided to assess bamboo’s potential as an alternative material for construction based on several key factors. Firstly, there is already a traditional culture of construction with bamboo in East Africa, particularly in Ethiopia, where it is estimated 4.8 million people live in bamboo homes. However, this construction is largely informal in nature, producing structures of generally poor quality. Therefore, the project aimed to assess how existing value chains could be improved. Secondly, from the results of INBAR and partner organization research in Asia and Latin America, INBAR has already demonstrated that due to its strength, versatility, and earthquake resistant, fast-growing, and self-regenerating properties, when treated and used properly, bamboo is a highly renewable and generally affordable material that can be used in every component of housing. Based on these experiences, INBAR hypothesized that proven traditional bamboo housing technologies from Asia and Latin America can be adapted in an East African context.
Based on the above rationale, the key research problems investigated in the project were:
1. Rising cost of building materials:
A number of East African countries import building materials, making construction expensive and often unaffordable for many local people. Alternatively, local bamboo resources have been relatively ignored as a sustainable building material. Due to high costs, the gap between demand and supply of housing has been rising in the region.
2. Lack of awareness on using bamboo as a building material:
One of the major problems in promoting bamboo as a building material is lack of awareness among government, researchers, builders and local communities.
3. Lack of technical knowhow and skilled human resources:
The other major problem associated with bamboo housing promotion in the region is lack of skilled human resources and technical knowhow. As architectural schools in the universities don’t include bamboo in their curriculum, students lack exposure to bamboo as a building material.
4. Lack of supportive bamboo housing policies:
No African country has policies on using bamboo as a building material, with no approved codes for bamboo building across the continent.
Research Problem Evolution based on Implementation:
While the majority of research problems identified before commencement of the project have proven accurate, INBAR understanding of the problem of local awareness for bamboo construction has become more nuanced during implementation, with an increasing realization that apart from lack of awareness, there are often additional acceptance issues with bamboo. These acceptance issues need to be overcome to foster uptake of bamboo housing. For example, in both Kenya and Uganda, although no surveys were undertaken, from local stakeholder interaction during implementation, INBAR found that people were hesitant to accept bamboo as a building material for permanent and modern housing, as they considered it only appropriate for building temporary shelters. In addition, in Ethiopia, the project value chain and feasibility study also showed that despite bamboo being a widely used traditional building material, the majority of bamboo dwelling communities are now tending to opt for concrete-based housing systems when they can afford them.
Conclusion:
In general, with the exception of some delayed co-funded CFC activities, the project has been highly successful in delivering planned activities and accomplishing stated objectives. For example, INBAR and our partners have trained 60 people on bamboo processing, cultivation and management, completed the construction of demonstration buildings in Kenya and Uganda, which are being actively used by local universities, raised awareness among African society on the use of bamboo as a modern building material, and built local capacity on bamboo management and utilization for modern bamboo structures.