Construction of bamboo demo house and training workshop in Ethiopia

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Feb 28- March 26, 2006

The need for sustainable building material is high in Ethiopia. Timbers are scarce and the other building materials such as concrete are relatively expensive and may not be environmental friendly. GTZ low cost housing project reported that 85% of the urban population of Ethiopia lives in inhuman, unhygienic and confined conditions. The population growth of 2.8% per year and accelerated migration to urban centres (6% per year) has increased the demand for affordable and decent houses. This indicates a greater potential of alternative building material. Nevertheless, Ethiopia has a great coverage of natural bamboo covering about 1 million-hectare throughout the country. It shows the greater potential for the construction as well. If such a rich resource could be used for an alternative building material, it would alleviate the building material problem to a large extent. Therefore, the existing knowledge and experiences on bamboo building may be highly useful and relevant in Ethiopia in the present context.

In order to promote bamboo in housing sector, INBAR initiated and conducted a national training cum workshop on bamboo housing in FEMSEDA premise in Addis Ababa from March 6 to 16, 2006. There were a total of 23 participants from Addis Ababa and regions from different technical backgrounds. Out of them half of the participants were from FEMSEDA, Addis Ababa.

The training lasted for 12 days and includes both theoretical as well as practical aspects. The participants were fully involved in the construction process. The structure of the house was finished before the training was concluded. The participants from the FEMSEDA continued working for completing the building.

The closing ceremony of the training was marked by the state minister of Agriculture and rural development. In addition, delegates from various organisations including also attended the ceremony. The building got a lot of public attention including ETV news and national newspaper.

The bamboo house built in Addis was an urban type with a size of 66 square meter. There is no design compromise in the house. It has expensive elegant roofing sheets, ceramic flooring and expensive waterproof painting. With reasonably heavy foundation, all the walls of the house were plastered with cement to make it look like modern house to fit for urban demands. The house costs less than 800 BIRR (less than 100$) per meter square which is almost one third of normal concrete house in Addis (2500 Birr per square meter). This house costs about half of the GTZ low cost unfinished house (1500 BIRR per square meter).