Sustainable housing could play a significant role in the way the continent tackles its housing deficit. We unpack the ground-breaking innovations, Initiatives and ideations&nbsp;developing&nbsp;the&nbsp;‘green&nbsp;scene’. 



In a village in the Mtwara region of Tanzania, a project borne from the concepts of architectural innovation, sustainability and social responsibility is underway. And it’s just one of many aimed at tackling the demand for environmentally-conscious housing in Africa.



A report from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) states that the continent’s housing deficit is estimated at over 97 million units and “this is expected to increase as the continent’s population grows, and urbanization continues”.



The clinical trial in Mtwara, dubbed The Star Homes Project, was initiated in 2021 by Denmark-based Ingvartsen Architects in cooperation with the Hanako Foundation and, according to the company, was developed by a cross-disciplinary team of architects, physicians, entomologists and social scientists along with local community leaders and stakeholders.



However, Jakob Knudsen, Principal Architect at Ingvartsen, says that the focus of the project, initially, was simply to improve the health of the occupants of the houses.



“The [houses] are made [of ] very light materials. It looks like concrete, but actually it’s a very thin steel profile with a thin plaster, so it has a very low material use. And what looks like glass is basically a net, so we kind of replaced all the walls with netting, and we made this house naturally very cool. We can see that we have lowered the material consumption and CO2 use by 30% to 40% depending on how you calculate it. And that’s because we try to kind of maximize all the components,” he says.



“It actually didn’t start as a sustainability thing. It started as a way to make the buildings cheaper, but we realized, during the process, that actually we are onto something where we’re using far less materials. It also became interesting from a financial side and a material side, and this is what we’re looking at now. We know that these houses are actually working against malaria, we can see that.”



An article from the World Health Organization on Malaria Day 2023 indicates that Tanzania is one of the four countries in Africa that accounted for slightly over half (52%) of all malaria deaths globally in 2021. Further to this, the country alone accounted for 4% of all malaria deaths, and the disease continues to pose a major burden in the northwest and southeastern regions of the country.



As part of the Star Homes Project, the health of the occupants of the 110 constructed homes will be compared to those living in 440 control homes over a three-year period, which is set to conclude this year.



“We conclude by the end of this year, then we have the three- year period. Nothing is published yet, but I can say that we have very promising results already on the malaria [aspect]. There’s a clear benefit from having a new house when you’re looking at malaria. I mean, this is a rural area in Tanzania, so lots of people [have] malaria, and they’re much better protected. But this is one of the first housing projects, to our knowledge, the first time a house has been built and used in this way to demonstrate it.”



Each house also has a 40W solar panel that provides lights in each room and USB charging, and rainwater is collected from the roof and stored in a 2,000-liter tank for clean drinking water. According to Knudsen, based on the materials used, it cost around $9,000 to build at the time.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-does-a-green-future-look-like">What does a ‘green’ future look like?</h4>



The ongoing demand for affordable housing coupled with growing climate change concerns has brought sustainable or green architecture to the fore.



Britannica defines green architecture as a philosophy of architecture that advocates sustainable energy sources, the conservation of energy, the reuse and safety of building materials, and the siting of a building with consideration of its impact on the environment.



A 2023 report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) titled, Building Materials And The Climate: Constructing A New Future, indicates that the buildings and construction sector is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, accounting for 37% of global emissions.



However, herein lies the opportunity. Entrepreneurs and businesses alike have taken up the mantle to innovate, ‘go green’ and make a positive impact on the environment at large.



According to the World Green Building Council’s (WorldGBC) Africa Manifesto for Sustainable Cities and the Built Environment, by 2050, Africa will be home to 1.1 billion more people than it is today, and 80% of the buildings that will exist in Africa in 2050 are yet to be built.



Lisa Reynolds, Chief Executive Officer of the Green Building Council South Africa (GBCSA) and Vice Chair for the WorldGBC’s Africa Regional Network, emphasizes the progress of the collaborative efforts across the continent. 



“We’ve got different sort of levels of Green Building Councils. In Africa, there are two established Green Building Councils – South Africa and Kenya, and the others are mixed between emerging and prospective. Our job, and I include Kenya in it, is really to support the prospective and emerging councils,” she tells FORBES AFRICA.



“Africa has [been] hit by climate events, so there is a huge awareness that, whether it be the Green Building Council or governments, [we] have to do something to alleviate these things,” Reynolds adds.



Knudsen echoes the sentiment on collaboration, stating, “I think one of the sustainability problems I see in Africa is that materials are used in a very inefficient way in many local buildings. You could easily save 30% of the materials if there was better knowledge for the builder who’s doing this, but that’s not something you can expect. We need somebody else who knows how to work with building techniques.”



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Trash to treasure</h4>



In 2019, the first plastic road was laid down in South Africa’s Jeffery’s Bay, and reports, published recently, indicate that it has lasted longer than traditional tar roads. And the uses for this often-troublesome product seem to only increase from here.



As per the United Nations’ goal 11 of making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable, entrepreneurs across Africa are tackling sustainable building prac- tices in their own way.



One such example is Kubik CEO and co-founder, Kidus Asfaw. Kubik, an environmental tech company, takes plastic waste and transforms it into low-carbon, low-cost housing in Ethiopia, where the startup is based.



Asfaw, who has worked for the World Bank, Accenture, and Google, as well as on technology and innovation initiatives for UNICEF, relays the story of how he got into the trash business. “I helped set up the first-ever circular economy project for UNICEF in Cote d’Ivoire, and we were able to create bricks out of plastic waste. We made over 500 schools using those and my love changed from software to trash, affordability, housing and cities. I did that for about four years,” he says.



“During that time, I learned the issues not just around trash, but a multitude of major challenges that human beings that live in cities are facing, especially on rapidly urbanizing continents like Africa. Alongside poor waste management [which] needs to be addressed, affordable housing is probably one of the biggest priorities in many countries right now. And then, of course, there’s climate change.”



Kubik, which was founded in 2021, produces products that are high in compression strength, non-flammable, non-toxic and modular.



“We’re a business that transforms hard-to-recycle plastic waste into building materials that real estate developers can use at a cheaper price than conventional cement-based materials without compromising the quality or safety of those buildings,” says Asfaw.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Kubik-Wall-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-63677" style="width:568px;height:auto" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Kubik-Wall-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Kubik-Wall-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Kubik-Wall-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Kubik-Wall-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Kubik-Wall-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Kubik Wall expression</figcaption></figure></div>


“Part of them doing business with Kubik [is] they’re also reducing the greenhouse gas impact that they bring to building cities like Addis Ababa. In a nutshell, we take all of that very bad plastic that you typically see in a landfill, and we make things like bricks that can make an entire wall, and that wall is as unremarkable as it looks, because it’s supposed to look just like every other building. What makes it remarkable to us is how accessible it is to lower-income communities, price-wise, and how green and sustainable it is within the real estate sector.”



In South Africa, sisters Kedibone and Kekeletso Tsiloane are tackling the plastic pollution and waste management issue through Ramtsilo Manufacturing and Construction, a company they founded in 2013. The business focuses on transforming hard-to-recycle plastics and other waste products into eco-bricks.



Kekeletso, who has a background in engineering, tells FORBES AFRICA about how this passion project turned into a fully-fledged business in a traditionally male-dominated industry.



“We initially started with small construction jobs, so building roads and building small projects, and that’s when we actually noticed that we spent so much money on materials, specifically bricks for us. We went out to look for a woman-owned brick manufacturing company, which we struggled to find. We then started making the bricks ourselves,” she says.



“I am interested in the green economy and what happens to waste and that grew an interest of learning about the afterlife of waste. In our research, we did not know that plastic had different properties and had different values. In terms of money, per kilogram, in the recycling space, it has different prices as well. And with that, we then sought out to make a product that we’re still comfortable with, but is innovative and in the green space.” South Africa, according to World Wide Fund (WWF), produces over 2.5 million tonnes of plastic annually. And while the bricks produced by Ramtsilo reportedly function in exactly the same way as conventional bricks, Kedibone, who has a finance background, states that the company still had to do a fair amount of educating on the product.



“We’re still having to re-educate people. It’s a plug and play solution but it integrates seamlessly into the construction industry. That was one of our biggest value-adds… the fact that people could easily use the product because they had the same look and feel as the conventional brick,” she explains.



“We then realized there’s additional benefits that come with the products – from an installation perspective, from a condensation water absorption [perspective] – because of the use of the plastic. The brick is actually branded so that people know that they’re [buying] an eco-friendly product. We’ve seen from the retailers, that product doesn’t stay in the retail stores and it’s simply because of the quality [and] the performance of the product.”


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignleft size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="768" height="1024" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Kekeletso-Kedibone-Tsiloane-768x1024.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-63676" style="width:516px;height:auto" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Kekeletso-Kedibone-Tsiloane-768x1024.jpeg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Kekeletso-Kedibone-Tsiloane-225x300.jpeg 225w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Kekeletso-Kedibone-Tsiloane-1152x1536.jpeg 1152w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Kekeletso-Kedibone-Tsiloane-1536x2048.jpeg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Kekeletso-Kedibone-Tsiloane-scaled.jpeg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Kekeletso &amp; Kedibone Tsiloane (Photo Supplied)</figcaption></figure></div>


According to Kedibone, the bricks can be found at South African retailers like Builders Warehouse and Leroy Merlin in Gauteng. And while Ramtsilo’s business model tends to focus more on partnerships with corporates and retailers – a model that appears to be working well for them – Kubik’s has opted to focus on and develop the company’s relationships with waste pickers.



“We grappled with what our supply chain model should look like for many months. There are thousands of waste pickers in Ethiopia. Most of those pickers happen to be women, over 80% of them, and most of them end up selling their produce for the day to brokers at very low prices that are not economically sustainable for them to pass the poverty line,” he says.



“We wanted our business model to have a supply chain that not only worked at scale and made business/financial sense for us, but ethically is also empowering those that have previously been exploited in this space. We typically would work with city administrations that typically manage landfills. We get into a partnership with them, set up a collection site and we directly source from these waste pickers at prices that are at least three, four times more than what they would normally get from a broker.”



<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-endless-possibilities">Endless possibilities</h4>



A quick search online reveals some of the most commonly-used sustainable materials in construction. Aside from bamboo and recycled plastic, others include recycled or reclaimed wood, cork, Hempcrete and biocomposite cement.



Traditional building practices have also been employed in some parts of the continent. UNEP had published an article about a project at a school in Burkina Faso, where the modules that form the structure for the school are built out of locally- sourced laterite. This is then cut into bricks and left in the sun to harden. The bricks reportedly absorb the heat during the day and radiate it at night.



Another example of innovation at work is the The Wits Flower Hall Examination and Test Centre in South Africa. Ac- cording to a recent release by the institution, the now energy- efficient building has been recognized for its sustainable design and shortlisted in the Creative Reuse category at the World Ar- chitecture Festival, set to take place in November.



“We believe that adaptive reuse is a critical foundation of green sustainable building due to the embodied carbon content of existing buildings. Wits has a great track record of repurposing buildings, for example the Science Stadium,” said Dr Heather Dodd from Savage + Dodd Architects, who worked on this project in 2022, in the release.



The growth of the sustainable or green building space presents significant employment opportunities as well, according to Reynolds.



“The more that certification grows, the more people need to be aware the job opportunities are growing with it. I do a CEO message on all our newsletters; the latest one is talking about job expansion. So, you know, there’s job creation, but there’s also potential for job expansion because we need accredited professionals; we need EDGE experts,” she states. “We did our first certification in 2009. If you think of pre-2009, there were no such things as accredited professionals. Now, small companies are formed just doing certification. It’s a true reflection of job creation and I would try to encourage more and more people to do it. If they’re in the space [and] it’s not job creation, expand your portfolio and go into this space.”

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Building Africa’s Green Future: How One Project Is Even Aiming To Curb Malaria With Sustainable Architecture

I love fashion. It’s not just part of my job as an international model, it’s a way of expressing myself and my cultural heritage. I am inspired and excited by the creativity of designers and the variety of fashion choices we can have available to us. Africa has many talented designers who are being recognized on a global scale. Just recently, African designer Kenneth Ize shared the exciting news that he will be collaborating with the Karl Lagerfeld fashion house to co-create the spring 2021 capsule collection.



Yet, when it comes to sustainability, the fashion industry has a lot of work to do. The fast fashion industry that originated in the West has accelerated fashion’s negative environmental and social impact. According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the fashion industry uses more energy than the aviation and shipping industries put together. It also states that the industry produces about 20% of global waste water and 85% of textiles end up in landfills or are incinerated when most of these materials could be re-used. Add to this the fact that fashion is also one of the biggest employers of forced labor, and the picture is pretty grim.



Now transport this to Africa, which is already experiencing the impact of climate change and though many African countries are pioneering the fight against plastic – some have made plastic bags illegal for example – we still have plenty to do to ensure we build sustainable businesses, especially in the fashion industry.



For me, sustainability is ultimately about trying to maintain our human existence and we can’t sit back and leave it to others, and this brings me to Malaika.



Malaika is the grassroots non-profit I founded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Its mission is to empower a community of people through education and health programs. It now comprises a school for over 346 girls and a community center that provides education and sport for development programs to 5,000 youth and adults, and we built and refurbished 20 wells that serve over 30,000 people with clean water. We have built Malaika over the past 13 years with sustainability in mind, and to us, it means using minimal resources and using them well.



Our IT suite, school and community center are powered by solar energy. In 2017, we set up our small farm where we teach organic farming and the food produced supplies the school canteen. We engage the community in a big clean-up of the village each month and our students plant trees and learn about the environment. Education is key to empowering people but it’s also key to changing our environmental impact. We are producing the leaders of tomorrow and we want them to be equipped to make an even bigger positive impact on our global carbon footprint than we have.



What can we do to reduce the effects of climate change? Firstly, I believe we, as consumers, need to hold more businesses to account. I try to do modeling campaigns with brands that are ethical and care about giving back because sustainability, to me, is also about the people who make our clothes. According to CARE International, an organization fighting global poverty, 75% of garment sector workers are women and the Covid-19 pandemic has led to brands cancelling big orders with suppliers leading to many workers losing jobs.



So, what can we as individuals do? We need to change the way we shop and ask more questions about how our favorite brands are producing their clothes. We need to take the time to investigate who is making them, what their working conditions are, and what they get paid. When I buy clothing or accessories, I ensure they are items I love and can see how they will fit in with the other clothes I own. HURR is the world’s leading fashion rental platform and I use it to rent clothes for events so I can wear a one-off piece or luxury brand item without buying it. A website I always check is eco-age.com for the latest news on global supply chains, artisanal brands, community projects and suggestions on which brands to shop. Finally, take a look at the United Nation’s ActNow climate action campaign for practical tips on how you can make a difference.



Start today. It takes time and effort to change our habits but every step we take towards sustainability will help change the world for future generations.



– By Noella Coursaris Musunka; an international model, philanthropist and founder of Malaika, a grassroots non-profit in the DRC.

Neolla at Malaika

Re-Use Clothes, Buy Ethically And Build Sustainability Into  The Fashion Industry

Gone Rural was registered in 1992 but founded many years before that by a British nurse—the late Jenny Thorne. Thorne and her husband owned a farm in Swaziland that now houses the House on Fire, Malandela’s restaurant, an internet café and the Gone Rural workshop and store.
“Jenny’s vision is that she really wanted to give independence and a voice to Swazi women,” says Philippa Thorne, her daughter-in-law.
Thorne has a background in design and came to Gone Rural 11 years ago as a volunteer after hearing about it from a friend. She is now the company’s creative director.
Gone Rural is a member of the World Fair Trade Organisation and makes eco-friendly handicraft made from lutindzi—a brittle mountain grass harvested in January. The grass is colored in wood burners for up to 30 minutes using eco-certified dyes from Germany. The raw materials are then sorted and weighed onsite according to orders. Gone Rural employs over 760 workers from the rural areas, a big jump from 30 in 1992. There are 23 permanent staff members in the workshop.
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The women get the raw materials delivered to them and they decide how much work they can take on. Once the orders are finished, they are picked up and brought to the workshop. This eliminates any traveling issues the women may have. Baskets can take anywhere from two to 10 days to make and if any new products are developed, training workshops are held with selected group members, who go on to train the rest of the group.
Many of the women came to Gone Rural via neighbors and relatives. The minimum working age is 16 years. Forty-eight per cent of the wholesale price goes to the women and the prices are revised every year.
“Our women are their own businesswomen and we’re basically partners with them,” says Thorne.
There is a challenge of managing growth—the company wants to help as many women as it can but it needs to keep in mind the current workers. Having 760 artisans means nothing when the orders just aren’t large enough to spread. Trying to keep everyone busy, while increasing numbers, will lead to the supply of an expensive product exceeding demand. After all, this is a business and not a charity. Someone will, however, still visit the women in the rural areas, irrespective of whether there is an order for them to fill, to reassure them that they are not forgotten.
Gone Rural’s products are sold in Britain and Canada and for the last five years it has partnered with Woolworths, in South Africa, to create food and nut Christmas hampers. Two retail shops in Swaziland and some South African curio shops also carry the company’s range of homewares, which were launched in 2011.
Even against the chaotic backdrop of the farm’s preparation for the Bushfire Festival in May, the stock room was full as orders were being sorted and ladies were brought in to finish off an urgent order—a black chandelier made from grass and T-shirt offcuts.
Gone Rural is competing against international products that are made by companies with more resources and lower prices. Ensuring that they have the highest quality possible is imperative. There are three check points in quality control. Each product first needs to pass a production co-ordinator in the rural areas. It then gets checked in the workshop with a final inspection taking place before orders are packed. The women get paid less for work that isn’t up to standard.
Visiting designers and partners such as Swazi Ceramics ensures that fresh ideas are continuously generated. The company has also gone as far using recycled plastic and T-shirt offcuts from a factory in Matsapa, Swaziland.
Swaziland is one of 15 landlocked countries on the continent; it is Southern Africa’s poorest country and has the world’s highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rate. With an estimated population of 1.3 million, the unemployment rate is estimated at 40%. With more than half the population living below the poverty line, the women of Gone Rural are doing their part in meeting the basic needs of their families and have moved away from the large dependence on subsistence agriculture.
In 1996, Gone Rural founded the non-profit organization Gone Rural boMake. This is an extension of the community services Jenny Thorne carried out when she was alive. The organization receives a minimum of 20% of Gone Rural’s profits as well as the merchandizing income from the annual Bushfire Festival that was featured in last month’s issue of FORBES AFRICA.
The NGO’s focus on education awards 360 bursaries each year to the artisans’ children and assists preschool teachers in early childhood development. It has health initiatives focusing on the prevention, treatment and support of HIV/AIDS, as well as on reproductive health and chronic disease.
Three thousand people benefit from the Gone Rural boMake Mobile Wellness Clinic. The World Bank estimated that 65% of Swaziland’s rural population had access to running water in 2010. BoMake has, to date, secured the drilling and fixing of 10 boreholes and the installation of a solar water pump system for the Makhekhe community—80km north of Swaziland’s capital, Mbabane.
So what would the woman who started it all say now? It’s clear that her vision has become that of many. An amazing and inspirational woman, according to her son Jiggs Thorne: “It’s a powerful thought what Mom would say about something she started manifesting into something so great,” he says.

Tag: Sustainable Development

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Building Africa’s Green Future: How One Project Is Even Aiming To Curb Malaria With Sustainable Architecture

Re-Use Clothes, Buy Ethically And Build Sustainability Into The Fashion Industry

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