Bamboo as a sustainable building material for meeting housing needs in East Africa : a value chain case study in Ethiopia

This paper assesses the potential of bamboo to meet East Africa’s urgent housing needs, with special reference to Ethiopia. The paper is based on a one-month field study of Ethiopia conducted in early 2011, where local bamboo value chains and their sustainability were investigated through a series of interviews, questionnaires, and site visits with local bamboo stakeholders. The study highlights that many rural communities use bamboo extensively as a building material with widespread applications in wall, roof, ceiling, structural work and scaffolding systems. Ethiopia has a rich diversity of traditional bamboo housing designs, practices and skills. However, we also found that the sustainability of Ethiopian bamboo architecture is under threat from modernization, decreasing availability of bamboo resources, increased rural populations, and lack of adequate processing skills and modern designs. Despite these challenges, our economic analysis indicates that using bamboo for the development of tourist lodges and, or, low-income urban housing offer a financially viable means of developing the bamboo construction sector. Therefore, to ensure sustainable development of bamboo-based construction, the study recommends that Ethiopian Government, with assistance from international development agencies, should 1) continue to integrate bamboo with local building materials and promote a broader range of bamboo construction projects through its urban and rural housing development programmes, 2) prepare building codes and product standards for bamboo housing and construction products, and 3) develop clear conservation and utilization policies for bamboo resources to ensure sustainability of the resource.