Affordable and low carbon building in Sub Saharan Africa

In Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) block based materials are often used since they enable building over a long period of time and permit using own and local labour.

Common materials in residential buildings are such as sand cement bricks which are low technology solutions attracting little research. In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania a typical SSA country, some 70% of all cement goes to the production of sandcrete blocks. Only about 15-30% of the cement building capability is used in these applications.

Since cement drives both the price and the carbon footprint this represents a huge waste affecting both people and the planet.

The proposed research co-operation will join competence from Chalmers and Uppsala University in Sweden, the buidling institute BAM from Germany, Meru University in Kenya and UDSM in Tanzania to come up with transdisciplinary solutions that can lead to the subsituton of parts or all of the the ordinary cement to produce alternative binders from locally available materials for affordable, low carbon blocks produced with appropriate technology.

Alternative binders are such as volcanic ashes, calcined clays and agricultural ashes.