Sustainable Housing for Rural Families in Africa

A new year, a new decade, new challenges to respond to, together.

Only a few months after COP25, which clearly demonstrated the difficulties that States encounter in passing from declarations of intention to acts, and the resultant severe delay in implementing measures to respond to climate change, this new decade needs to be one of clear-sighted courage.

As we reach a critical point in human history, the housing challenge is clearly one of the major issues related to ecological, social, and climatic evolution: a major daily preoccupation of billions of people throughout the world.
The population of the ten countries of the Sahel, currently estimated at 300 million - a figure which could double within the next three decades - is amongst the most affected by the challenges of attaining decent and secure living conditions, green jobs,  professional training, local economic growth, and resilience to climate and environmental changes. For the last twenty years, the programme of AVN and its partners has helped provide a global, adapted, and durable response to these challenges by accompanying the emergence and growth of a Nubian Vault construction market in the Sahel, based on locally sourced materials and endogenous skills.

More than ever, this programme must attract and  bring together all possible sources of support and strength to significantly scale up its work and multiply its impacts. Together, whatever form your actions, however modest, may take, we invite you to contribute your thoughts, ideas, and strong commitment to support and enhance the long-lasting, necessary, and fascinating evolution of our programme.

The entire AVN team send you their best wishes for 2020 and the challenging decade ahead.

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AVN at the Sudan International Education Conference

From January 25 to 27, 2020, AVN was at the SIEC 2020 (Sudan International Education Conference) in Sudan. Co-organized by the World Bank, the European Union, UNICEF and the Sudanese Ministry of Education, the objective of this conference was to bring the main stakeholders in the sector to identify priorities for the transformation of the Sudanese education system and to propose a collaborative process for the development of new policies and actions contributing to such changes.

AVN’s experience in the Western Sahel over the past twenty years has been presented as a case study. Particular emphasis was placed on the importance of the evolution of constructive practices towards more sustainability and accessibility. This evolution is now mandatory in response of the current environmental and climatic crises and the massive needs in terms of housing and basic infrastructure that the Sahel is currently facing.