By Cyril Nii Ayitey TETTEH
Greetings Ghana, it has been a long minute since we engaged here and before we could blink, it is almost the end of Q1, 2025! Phew! How time flies! The good news however is, I am back bearing gifts and nuggets to empower you in your real estate decisions.
By the end of this century the world’s three largest cities will be in Africa: Lagos, Kinshasa, and Dar-Es-Salaam. The combined population of these three cities is expected to be a staggering 244 million.
The need for resilient and sustainable buildings and cities is at an all time high. However there are challenges with funding and constructional models to meet the high deficit. This has given rise to some interesting alternative building models on the continent.
If you are an individual or real estate developer looking for innovative building solutions, my friends at Footprints Africa, now Impact Footprints Africa, put together this fantastic publication on circular and alternative building solutions being practiced in Africa. Have a read and feedback as always.
Prefab
Kenya-based architects BuildX Studio envisage a world made for people and the planet by creating the buildings of a radically better tomorrow. To achieve this vision, they take a low carbon approach to design and construction.
Their design improves health and human experience in buildings, and their goal is for all their buildings to be inclusively designed and built with a particular focus on women. Market research and participatory design strategies are a core element to achieve this during the design process.
One of their current projects, Zima Homes, is an affordable housing development of 137 units which addresses two key challenges in the Kenyan market: the low-quality affordable housing and the need for more sustainable building. BuildX is the designer, contractor and developer of the project.
As with some of the other case studies, we profile, these are two challenges which are difficult to reconcile – ‘green’ versus ‘sustainable’. Zima Homes still uses ‘conventional’ building materials such as concrete and steel but in a smart way to reduce embodied carbon, including using prefabricated wall and floor slab components that are scalable, replicable and precisely factory designed to use only the concrete and steel needed.
BuildX closely collaborates with their sister company BuildHer, a social enterprise that works to help women across Kenya actively contribute towards urban development to create safe, inclusive, resilient and sustainable cities.
Buildher equips women in Kenya with accredited construction and manufacturing skills to create greater financial prosperity, changing male attitudes and promoting gender equality within the construction industry.
Hemp
Climate change will have a serious impact on poorer people living in cities across Africa as the number and intensity of climate-related disasters increase. In 2019 cyclone Idai devastated central Mozambique and was the second deadliest tropical cyclone on record, leaving 1,300 people dead and Mozambique’s second largest city, Beira, in ruins.
In this context, Casa Real is working to develop effective climate-resilient housing. We have included Casa Real as an example since it shows affordable and resilient housing can be made commercially viable.
Its business model is centred on designing, building, and selling houses that people can afford. Their first project is a development in the Inhamizua community of Beira for 180 houses, providing homes for around 900 people.
The World Bank estimates that roughly 80% of jobs in Africa are informal. Without an employment contract, no bank will provide a mortgage, immediately excluding the majority of the population. This is why Casa Real launched a lease to buy scheme earlier this year to improve accessibility to their housing.
Previously, only 3% of Beira’s urban population could afford a quality home through the local mortgage system. With Empowa’s lease to buy tool housing accessibility has now been expanded to over 60% of the urban population. Results so far confirm that these lower income clients are paying their leases on time and saving up diligently to buy their home.
Casa Real’s houses incorporate passive design principles; they are naturally ventilated, for example, which is important in the face of rising temperatures and humidity levels. They are modelled on an incremental building approach, allowing their users to expand according to their needs – but in a structured way.
In order to further its path into climate-proofing its houses, Casa Real is increasingly including simple but effective solutions such as solar panels and natural wastewater treatment plants with local water recharging systems.
Together with South African partners Afrimat Hemp and Wolf and Wolf Architects, Casa Real has started pioneering industrial hemp based construction. Over the last few months Africa’s first affordable hempcrete based and climate-resilient home was delivered in Beira by the team.
Mushrooms and Waste
Imagine a tough, fire-resistant building material that could simply grow from a combination of mushrooms on agricultural waste. In Kenya, most construction materials are imported, and for this reason are relatively expensive and often simply not the best quality.
The country has an annual housing demand of 250,000 units with an estimated supply of just 50,000. That means an 80% deficit.
At the same time, there are natural resources whose potential application in construction is largely untapped. One is agricultural waste produced by small-scale farmers. Another is mycelium, a natural fungal material with industrial-level strength.
Their solution MycoTile offers a high performance and cheaper alternative to traditional building materials. MycoTile uses a carbon negative process to bond agricultural waste (such as maize cobs, coffee husks, coconut coir and rice husks) with mushroom mycelium. The product is denatured through heat treatment in order to inhibit mycelium growth.
Their first product was suspended ceiling panels, which have superior acoustic performance and fire-retardant properties compared to the available alternatives. The fire-retardancy is naturally enhanced by the chitin that is present in mycelium.
They have big plans and are prototyping a larger portfolio of products, such as wall insulation, construction blocks, MDF-style panels and even furniture.
Although the major challenge has been changing public perception on the use of mycelium in construction, MycoTile currently has more demand than they can supply. A recent important step in their growth was the conclusion of a co-manufacturing contract with a government entity.
They are establishing partnerships with small scale farmers, who they pay for agricultural waste, to assure a constant supply.
Mtamu Kililo is a Kenyan architect and designer at Cave Bureau. During his fellowship with the architecture studio MASS Design Group in Rwanda, he was given the space and time to pursue his own research interests.
He came across examples of ‘leather’ being made using mushroom mycelium and this sparked his imagination on applications for the technology in the construction industry. He went on to co-found MycoTile.
The writer is the Executive director of Yecham Property Consult
& Founder of Ghana Green Building Summit.
Email: [email protected]
Linkedin: Cyril Nii Ayitey Tetteh
