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idaseing 1 hours ago [-]
Let’s replace the local materials and techniques used for generations with expensive, hideous concrete slabs and corrugated roofs designed in a month by outside builders with no experience of local conditions and no concern for how things fit in with the local environment or whether local people can afford them or build them, making them dependent on outside support, all for some dubious gains in mosquito protection that could be achieved just as well by adding some cheap screens to the existing houses. Groundbreaking.
casey2 4 hours ago [-]
We don't need a house right now, we need food, scrap it and sell it.
Some years later: Alright now that food security has improved lets buy a house. Sorry most construction companies got put out of business by Humanitarian Builder Inc. and they just closed shop cos funding ran out. Contractors aren't building permanent businesses.
manarth 2 hours ago [-]
If the recipients could only afford a traditional mud + thatch home, the contractors building work was new additional demand, rather than competition against existing builders.
Even when first-world funding dries up, knowledge of the design, its features and benefits will remain. It's also cheaper than the alternative single-storey concrete home design, so perhaps generating new construction demand from people who couldn't quite afford the more expensive single-storey stone house but can afford this new design.
It's certainly an eye-opening unusual project, but I think it's a net gain for the region, even without a sustained/permanent first-world benefactor.
aaron695 5 hours ago [-]
[dead]
pfannkuchen 6 hours ago [-]
Is anyone else starting to wonder whether somebody is intentionally raising an army for some future purpose in Africa?
Like the thing preventing “development” in Africa isn’t that too many of their children die early. Or, if it is, can someone enlighten me? I don’t understand how that is the problem with “development” occurring there.
manarth 2 hours ago [-]
Because the UN expects the population to double by 2070?
That's a simple extrapolation of growth rates and some assumptions about improvements in mortality.
110 new homes isn't going to make a dent in raising an army.
Some years later: Alright now that food security has improved lets buy a house. Sorry most construction companies got put out of business by Humanitarian Builder Inc. and they just closed shop cos funding ran out. Contractors aren't building permanent businesses.
Even when first-world funding dries up, knowledge of the design, its features and benefits will remain. It's also cheaper than the alternative single-storey concrete home design, so perhaps generating new construction demand from people who couldn't quite afford the more expensive single-storey stone house but can afford this new design.
It's certainly an eye-opening unusual project, but I think it's a net gain for the region, even without a sustained/permanent first-world benefactor.
Like the thing preventing “development” in Africa isn’t that too many of their children die early. Or, if it is, can someone enlighten me? I don’t understand how that is the problem with “development” occurring there.
That's a simple extrapolation of growth rates and some assumptions about improvements in mortality.
110 new homes isn't going to make a dent in raising an army.