Traditional housing is no longer feasible as trees and bush timber are disappearing.Climate change, deforestation, and increasing population growth make it impossible for people to use traditional building techniques, so they have no other choice but to buy imported corrugated iron roofing sheets and sawn timber to build the roofs for their homes.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, 100 Million people lack access to decent housing.

Example of traditional African housing, which can no longer be built because of the lack of timber.

The challenge: housing in africa1/

Iron roofing sheets and concrete are unsuitable

50 % of families in West Africa are concernedTo build their houses they have to dip into their meager food, health, and education budgets to buy imported and expensive corrugated iron sheets, sawn timber and concrete; this plunges them into a vicious circle of poverty.

housing: a vital need for human development

These materials are imported so they are expensive, but also very uncomfortable. Indeed such tin roofs have many disadvantages: their fragility (7 years for one iron sheet on average), their poor thermal and sound insulation, making houses too hot in the day, often too cold at night, and extremely noisy during the short but intensive rainy season, and their cost. Concrete has also very poor thermal properties and is far too expensive for rural families.

The Sahel region has the lowest Human Development Index (HDI) in the world, manifested in widespread poverty, low rates of schooling, and low average life expectancy.

A survey by the African Population and Health Research Center in 2002 lists access to housing as the second priority after paid work, and before access to clean water. Despite these facts, no large-scale program has yet been launched to try to tackle the problem of housing in the Sahel.

Human Deve-lopment Index (HDI)

As Dipal Chandra Barua, ex-director of the Grameen Bank has said: ‘ Housing is one of the most basic needs of every individual, for organizing one’s life, planning for the future, and being able to think clearly. For the poorest in society, a house is not a consumer good to be bought and sold, but a vital investment for a family’s health, livelihood, and well-being ‘

The consequences are severeon people, and on women in parTicular: such homes are subject to infestation and fire risks, and require constant maintenance, often the responsibility of the women in the family.on local economies: the use of imported materials drains cash out of local economies and makes it impossible for the people that live outside the cash economy (the informal sector) to have a decent house.on The environmenT: the use of wood to build houses accelerates deforestation, and importing materials increases CO2 emissions caused by their production and transport.on local culTures: as iron roofing has replaced traditional techniques, important cultural traditions, such as the use of flat roof-terraces to dry crops, are disappearing.

‘I am Mrs Ekobié, I live in Lia, a village in Burkina Faso, West Africa.

The timber beams and supports of my house are rotten, and, because no bush timber is available, they cannot be replaced, so the roof of my house will collapse. To get a new roof, a vital necessity, I have to draw on my meager cash savings, set aside for schooling, medicine, and food, to buy corrugated iron roofing sheets and sawn timber beams. These expensive imported materials provide poor temperature and sound insulation and cannot support a traditional flat roof-terrace. They make for unhealthy and potentially dangerous housing (tin roofs can be blown away by strong winds, or even stolen!); they rust and need to be replaced every 7-10 years.’ >Like many families in the Sahel, Mrs Ekobié is trapped in a vicious circle of poverty and squalor, and has no affordable acces to decent and safe housing.

Today there is no single large scale program that adresses these issues

The Sahel needs a global solution that integrates:

A construction technique for appropriate roofs

Built professionally by masons with the necessary skills

As part of emerging and actively promoted markets in affordable housing