Sustainable Housing for Rural Families in Africa

Until recently, the main thrust of AVN's work has been in Burkina Faso, and over the border in neighbouring regions of southern Mali. But three years ago, we started getting requests from several organisations for sending trained VN master masons from Burkina Faso to work on projects in Senegal.

Of these requests, the most important has been in the region of Matam in north-eastern Senegal: the construction of a technical training centre and annexes (La maison des énergies) in Thiangol, close to the Senegal river, launched in January 2009, with financial sponsorship from the Communauté de Communes Val de Drôme (CCVD), France. AVN has provided a core  team of masons from Burkina Faso, led by VN master mason Camille Sanon, to build the centre and train local apprentices. The main purpose of this centre is to provide training and support for villagers in conservation of the environment of the river basin, renewable energy sources, and local making of tools and other products. The centre includes workshops, meeting rooms, offices, and accommodation units, and the major construction work is now more or less completed (see photos below). Although this project falls outside the main focus of AVN's work, namely to support the construction of houses for villagers, it is serving two very important functions:

- introducing the VN technique to a new region of the Sahel, and demonstrating that the technique is viable and sustainable

- providing a training site for apprentices from local villages and from elsewhere in Senegal, who themselves will spread the technique, recruit apprentices of their own, and kick-start a market for rural housing.

As an example of this last point, in March 2010, in Dakar, Haidar el Ali, President of l’Océanium , and AVN signed a partnership agreement to open a pilot village program in the zone of Kolda, in upper Casamance. Hamidou Diallo, Océanium coordinator in this region, will be project manager for this programme over the next four years. At the moment, a number of apprentice masons from Kolda are undergoing on-site training at the CCVD/AVN project at Thiangol (see photo below). A further 12 apprentices from the the region of Thies, 50 km from Dakar, have also been working on the Thiangol project, and will be returning home soon to start a program in villages close to Thies.

Any support you can provide to help support the new apprentices in Senegal in becoming independent entrepreneurs providing sustainable and safe housing in their villages will be very welcome....

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• The latest news from AVN

This autumn, we have had the resources, for the first time, to undertake a full and accurate analysis of the results of our program since its start in 2000. Here are some of the key points:

- if all the vaults built since 2000 in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Senegal by masons trained by AVN were placed end-to-end, their total length would be 7.5 km , or 4.7 miles, equal to a total area of around 20,000 square meters (a standard NV vault has an internal width of 3.25 meters),

- in total, 176 masons have been trained, with a further 230 currently on apprenticeships,

- the program has directly benefited some 7,800 people (clients and their families, masons, apprentices, laborers...)

- 400,200 $ worth of local salaries have been generated by the program,

- 2,000 tonnes of CO2-equivalent have been saved, as compared to the usual alternative construction methods,

- a new program has been successfully opened in Zambia, southern Africa.

Growth of the program has been very significant during the 2009/10 building season, especially in Burkina Faso and Mali, with 11 new Pilot Village Deployment Programs (PVDP) opened, each one centred around a cluster of villages, with a local 'champion' (a community leader, for example) spear-heading the promotion of NV houses, and bringing in a team of NV masons to train local apprentices and build the first houses. Amongst the photographs with this report are examples of typical two-vault village houses built as part of these DPVP's.To cope with the increased level of activity, the team at AVN's HQ in Boromo, Burkina Faso has been expanded to 8 people now (see photo).

The three-vault church in Petit-Balé, near Boromo, has now had a magnificent bell-tower added to it (see photo)

The AVN show house at this years Salon International de l'Artisanat (SIAO), held in the Burkina Faso capital of Ougadougou in the first week of November attracted some 4,000 visitors (see photo) and two teams of NV masons on our stand signed up future clients for NV houses.

And... we recently received images of the first NV house to cross the Atlantic! In the Spring of 2009, Stevan de la Rosa, a young Mexican, spent several months learning the NV technique in Boromo in 2009. I include a photo of the first NV building he has constructed with a team from a rural educational project in San Isidro, in the centre of Mexico. The building has two rooms, one for storing seed, the other for tools. More NV buildings are planned ...

So, that's a quick summary of the latest news. Many thanks again to all of you who are supporting our work - but there's still a long way to go before we can make a really significant impact on improving housing conditions for all the poor rural families in sub-Saharan Africa.

Tony Kaye