Economic Growth Zambia Project #5548

Help build affordable houses for Zambian villagers

by Association la Voute Nubienne (AVN)

Project Report | Jun 10, 2011
Start of the 2011 construction season

By Tony Kaye | Member of AVN Management Committee

Camille Sanon, team leader

The rainy season has now ended in Zambia, and the AVN program for 2011 has just started. Three experienced NV practitioners traveled from Boromo, Burkina Faso, to our pilot zone in a cluster of villages in the Chibombo District of Zambia in May, to join the seven apprentices whose training started last year:

- Camille Sanon,VN master-mason, entrepreneur, and trainer (level 5), who has spent the last three construction seasons successfully running and training a team of NV masons and apprentices in northern Senegal

- Karim Ouédraogo, NV master mason (level 4), with eight seasons experience of vault construction and apprentice training in Burkina Faso

- Adama Guira, an English-speaking extension worker from the AVN office in Burkina Faso , whose tasks will include promoting the NV technique in the villages in the District, and training a local project manager to replace him at the end of the 2011 season.

These three brave men are currently touring round the villages in the District on new bicycles provided by AVN-Belgium, and with the help of the two Zambian masons trained last year ( Christopher Phiri and Kasalama Moobela), recruiting apprentices and organizing the first building sites of the season. We hope that they, in collaboration with our local partners and 'champions' in this pilot zone, will lay the foundations for an ongoing program of development and growth of a market in NV housing in the region, and eventually, maybe, in neighbouring countries (as has happened in the Sahel with the extension of the AVN program from Burkina Faso to Mali and to Senegal).

Any help you can provide in supporting the improvement of housing conditions for village families through the nurturing and growth of this program in Zambia, will, as always, be very welcome.

Karim Ouedraogo, master-mason

Adama Guira, Extension agent

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Mar 1, 2011
Preparing for the next construction season

By Tony Kaye | Member of AVN Management Committee

The construction season in the villages of the Chibombo District in Zambia runs from May to November, during the driest months of the year. So there is little to report from the field since my last update in November, at the end of the successful first VN construction season.

However, there has been a lot of activity behind the scenes, in planning and organising the 2011 program:

- around 10,000 euros ( 14,000 $ ) has been raised from institutional sponsors by AVN-Belgium to support the program, and a further $350 has come in through your donations via Global Giving,

- ongoing discussions with the Zambian Ambassador in Brussels have ensured that there is growing official support for AVN's program,

- an experienced project manager from AVN Burkina Faso will go out to Zambia at the beginning of May for a month to tour the villages in the district, asses the needs and demands for VN housing, and help train up a local project coordinator and select suitable apprentices,

- at the end of May, two VN master masons from Burkina will go there for the duration of the six month construction period, to train a new batch of Zambian apprentices and, at the same time, build more VN village houses.

So, the foundations have been laid for the next season, when we hope to see at least a doubling of the results from 2010. The start-up costs of this program are far higher than those of our projects in the Sahel, because of the need to provide air fares, insurance, and subsistence for the skilled masons and other staff brought in from Burkina Faso; Clearly, these costs will reduce in a couple of years' time, when the technology transfer process will be completed, and a local AVN team will have been established in Zambia. But, in the meantime, any help you can provide will, of course, be very welcome

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Nov 29, 2010
A successful first year

By Tony Kaye | Member of AVN Management Committee

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