How to build affordable homes

How to make home building more affordable

Image: World Economic Forum

Globally, Creating low-cost housing and social infrastructure is a challenge. A project to create much-needed courthouses in Tanzania may have shown a way forward.

The Moladi construction system replaces the cumbersome bricklaying process with an approach similar

to injection moulding. Workers erect the building’s frame with reusable plastic panels, leaving wall cavities which – once the windows, doors, wiring and pipework have been put in – are filled with a fast-setting, aerated mortar.

The building process can be monitored by just one qualified supervisor who manages local workmen with no prior construction experience or skills.

The first project, Kibaha District Courthouse, was built for $250 per square metre, which is half the cost of conventional methods. It took six months to complete when it might typically have taken up to three years using traditional methods. On the back of this success, the Tanzanian government has committed to building another 11 district courthouses using this method.