To beat deficit, developers might  have to adopt prefab technology

For a very long time now, Kenya has been experiencing a biting housing shortage, especially in urban areas.

The government has come up with various proposals to stem the dearth, including the construction of low-cost housing units and upgrading of informal settlement zones, but these have done little to alleviate the problem.

Few people have studied the market to understand what the industry and the government are doing wrong, but one man believes he knows where the problem lies: our obsession with everything that is put up using cement bricks and mortared with the toughest bonding offers in the market.

That man is Mr Julius Kamau, president of  International Green Structures Kenya Limited. Like the name of his firm suggests, Mr Kamau believes the future of Kenya’s construction industry lies in alternative materials and rebel architecture, and that the genius who finally manages to come up with ideas that have mass appeal will revolutionise the sector, completely.

Brick and mortar constructions are just “too expensive” and “time consuming”, he says. The result is that “adequate houses are not affordable, while the affordable ones are not adequate”.

Driving around Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Eldoret and other major towns leaves you with the feeling that the country is really addressing its housing needs, but looks can be deceiving. Despite all the cranes and earthmovers clearing grounds for huge construction projects, we are just scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to the nation’s housing needs.

AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Consider this, for instance; at the launch of county campaigns on affordable housing last year, National Housing Corporation’s manufacturing division general manager, Mr Andrew Saisi, placed the country’s housing deficit at about 200,000 units annually.

So where do all those glitzy buildings they are putting up all over the place go?

The answer is simple: they are swept away by the lucky few who know about them in the first place, and who have the loads of money required to acquire them. And they are not that many, actually.

Against an annual need of about 250,000 units, the industry only churns out about 50,000, hence the 200,000 deficit. In urban areas, where the nation is migrating to as it gradually urbanises, housing needs stand at 150,000 units annually, yet the current supply is only about 30,000 annually — a shortfall of 80 per cent, according to NHC estimates.

The Kenya Vision 2030’s long-term strategy aims at improving the livelihoods of Kenyans through, among others, access to affordable and adequate housing. Under the Ministry of Land, Housing and Urban Development’s National Housing Programme, the government seeks to meet the Vision’s aim by developing over 300,000 housing units across the country through multiple strategies.

One such strategy is the use of alternative building technologies such as prefabricated houses, which are faster to construct and are touted to be effective in cost and material. They are also said to be strong, durable and aesthetically appealing.

Through the National Housing Corporation, expanded polystyrene panels, which provide a take construction period, are being used to deliver affordable housing in some parts of Nairobi, but the uptake is still quite slow.

This need to provide adequate and affordable housing, however, is not a government-only affair as it has also roped in private entities. In June last year, for instance, American firm International Green Structures announced plans to invest approximately Sh527 million in prefab technology, and in the long term to build a Sh1.3 billion manufacturing facility in Thika.

Also, Malaysian firm Koto Housing Limited in 2014 announced that it could build a three-bedroom house in 14 days at a cost of Sh1.8 million, which would alternatively cost around Sh3.6 million — or double — if built using the conventional brick-and-mortar way.

Boleyn Magic Wall Panel Limited, a Chinese firm based in Nairobi, has also shown interest in the affordable construction market in Kenya by introducing a precast concrete building solution made at the firm’s Sh3 billion factory in Kitengela.

These are just but some of the many players in the prefabricated market in the country churning out all manner of products, from compressed agricultural fibre panels and expanded polystyrene pieces to cement fibre panels, interlocking bricks and stabilised soil blocks.

QUICK TO BUILD

“I first saw a fully assembled prefabricated house at the Agricultural Society of Kenya’s (ASK) show last year and was thoroughly impressed,” says 39-year-old Pauline Kamau, a banker who is also putting up a rental apartment in Ruai on the outskirts of Nairobi, towards Kangundo.

Interestingly, however, even though Ms Kamau liked the idea of putting up a prefabricated unit, she is not using the technology in her Ruai project. Asked why, she says she fears that, because it is not popular yet in the country, people might not be interested in her rental units if they discover they are prefabs.

Also, the technology is little understood in the country, leading to all manner of negative publicity about it.

“I am also not sure about the strength of these alternatives for highrise buildings, and I would not want to be the first one to risk this,” she says.

That misinformation is attributed to inadequate industry publicity and limited contractors and professionals who are conversant with the technology, said National Housing Corporation’s Andrew Saisi during the launch of county campaigns on affordable housing last year.

The biggest concern in the use of prefabricated technology remains security, as consumers feel psychologically unsafe in a house made of panels. Most developers are also not that enthusiastic about the idea of using prefabs and would rather adopt a watch-and-wait approach to see how the market unfolds.

But such reasoning is “unfounded” as prefabricated panels are made to meet “high standards of stability under extreme conditions”, says Mr Kamau.

A typical prefabricated unit takes no longer than a month to construct due to the pre-engineered framing system.

Once the foundation has been established, a prefabricated option takes about two days to set up. The finishing takes an additional 12 days, and therefore a turn-key product would be ready in 14 days, Mr Kamau says.

While some people say the cost of putting up a house could be halved by this technology, Boleyn Managing Director Jack Liu says precasts are guaranteed to reduce the cost of homes by 20 to 30 per cent, and hence provide affordable housing for the low- and middle-income segment.

The technology, however, might not just reduce the cost of homes, but also prove a step in the right direction in helping tame sub-standard constructions that lead to regular collapsing of buildings in the country, according to Mr Liu.

The reasoning is that, since precast concrete is manufactured in a controlled casting environment, it is easier to control the mixing, placement and curing, hence the quality of the construction can be controlled and monitored much more easily than on-site cast concrete.

What will determine the success of prefabricated building technologies, however, is what the average Kenyan thinks of it. It is our responsibility, says Mr Kamau, to search for alternative ways to mitigate this socio-economic crisis.

Other industry players in the pan-African and global markets have provided benchmarks that have proved successful over the years, and it high time Kenyans followed suit.