Manufacturer comes up with a solution to Nigeria's housing deficit

In light of Nigeria’s housing deficit of well over 17 million units, Lafarge Africa Plc has come up with a solution, a new building technology called the Aluminum Shuttering.

According to the world's largest building materials manufacturer, this technology will produce lots of houses at an increased speed and reduced cost.

"This is our response to the housing deficit in this country. We are providing solution to that by building low cost housing and providing homes that are as cheap as possible with quality and durability”, said Jumoke Adegunle, Head, Affordable Housing and Buildings.

READ: Lafarge Africa Plc set to build 300,000 affordable housing units by 2020

Using this new building technology, Lafarge has commissioned a prototype Studio Apartment in Lagos state.

This apartment was constructed within 12 days, has one room, toilet with bath-room, a kitchen and cost N1.5 million.

At the launch, Tunde Isiolaitan, Chairman, Tye-Wall Contractors Limited, whose company built the sample studio house with an American construction firm called Walls, Tiles and Forms (WTF) Inc., spoke more on the apartment.

“This is basically a concrete home and the shell was done in just two days. The finishing and other things took another 10 days. Our system of production suits Lafarge’s dream of mass housing production at low cost pricing. The houses are so solid that bullet cannot penetrate them. All the electrical and plumbing materials are in-built. The thickness of the wall is about 4 inches. Repair can easily be carried out because any part of the wall can be opened up using a diamond cutter. All you need is to have the drawing of the building. When building a large volume of housing, you could leverage economy of scale to reduce prices, hence making the units cheap; so, while it takes one to two months to build what we have here through the traditional method, you can use 12 days to do it with this technology”.

READ: Ogun state collaborates with Lafarge Africa Plc to solve housing problems

Do you approve of this new building technology?