Modern bricks provide green solutions for affordable housing in Africa
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Fatou Dieye and
Daniel Wyss outline a true model for green industrialisation.
Like many African cities whose limited resources are strained by the pressures of rapid urban transformation, the cities in the Great Lakes Region (Rwanda, Burundi and Eastern DRC) suffer from the typical signs of construction industry dysfunction: large quantities and high costs of imported building materials and a shortage of local construction firms with access to the skilled labour and financing required for building standardised housing at mass scale.
Consequently, despite a handful of well-planned housing schemes, the construction of informal housing persists and low-income households continue to cluster in fire, flood and earthquake-prone settlements.