Opportunities for affordable construction in Uganda using locally available materials

Uganda, like many other countries in the Global South, is in dire need of affordable housing. According to the 2017 Uganda National Household Survey, the number of poor Ugandans increased from 6.6 million in 2012/13 to 10 million in 2017 (Twinoburyo 2018). Uganda's population growth is also the fourth highest in the world (The World Bank Group 2018). With the cost of manufacturing and purchasing construction materials like cement increasing due to scarcity of raw materials (Kamukama 2018), many Ugandans are unable to afford to construct homes. This thesis examines the possibilities of using bamboo and compressed stabilized earth blocks (CSEB) as a substitute for expensive and carbon-intensive cement-based construction materials. These low-cost building materials will allow more Ugandans to afford to construct houses and other larger buildings like schools. Low-cost indigenous materials are perceived as poor quality and inferior.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Nuwagaba, Herbert Mwesigye.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Caitlin T. Mueller.

• Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/127321

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/127321