This Ancient Building Technique Could House Millions Of People In Africa

In Sahelian Africa, a region that spans the continent and is bordered by the Sahara to the north and the Sudanian Savanna to the south, the roofs of many houses are built with bush timber and straw. But amid population growth and rapid deforestation in the region, people have begun to seek out an alternative: corrugated iron sheets, imported from Europe, that are expensive and have to be replaced every five to seven years.

Though they’re more “modern,” these roofs have failed to deliver sustainable housing to the majority of people in the region. “To build their houses, they have to dip into their meager food, health, and education budgets to buy these imported and expensive materials, which plunges them into a vicious circle of poverty,” Cécilia Rinaudo, deputy director of the Nubian Vault Association (AVN) tells Fast Company.

The program began in Burkina Faso, when a French mason named Thomas Granier, who had learned of the ancient technique, traveled to the country to see if it could take root in a region that, though unfamiliar with the technique, was in need of housing and had the resources to support it. Along with Seri Youlou, a Burkinabe farmer, they built Burkina Faso’s first Nubian vault in 1998. As they continued to trial the building method, “they discovered that it was not just a simple experiment but the real solution to the housing issue in West Africa, where which millions of families are struggling because of the disappearance of wood and straw used for traditional buildings,” Rinaudo says. Granier founded AVN in 2000.

In Sahelian Africa, Rinaudo says, housing is a necessity, yet precarious for many families. Despite the fact that Sahelian populations have contributed very little to climate change, they are particularly vulnerable to its effects: extreme temperatures, changes in rainfall patterns, and desertification. In rural areas, many people work as subsistence farmers outside formal economies and live on around $2 per day.

To date, AVN has supported the construction of 2,000 buildings and housed 24,000 people across Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, Benin, and Ghana. Through training masons and apprentices, the nonprofit estimates that its contributed around $2.6 million to local economies and saved an estimated 65,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions (calculated over a 30-year lifespan of the building). The homes, Rinaudo says, “represent a real solution for climate change mitigation and the adaptation of the housing sector in West Africa.”

As AVN continues to scale, it hopes to deploy its program in other western Sahelian countries including Togo, Ivory Coast, and Guinea, and eventually expand to Sudan and Rwanda. Rinaudo says the nonprofit aims to house 5% of the Sahelian population (around 20 million people) in Nubian vaults by 2050. While AVN’s efforts are focused in Africa, Rinaudo says this ancient method of construction could potentially take root in any part of the world where rainfall is scarce and timber is in short supply. While the Nubian vault technique was developed thousands of years ago, returning to it now makes sense: As we search for ways to mitigate climate change caused by a disregard for our environment, it’s only fitting that we look to a time when our relationship with our planet and its resources was not so destructive as it has become.