“Use 30% local materials for Gov’t building projects” – KNUST demands

As Ghana marks world architecture day; a senior lecturer with the KNUST Architecture faculty Dr Daniel Duah is calling for a comprehensive policy to promote the use of local materials to reduce the cost of building in the country.

The theme for this year’s commemoration “Architecture – housing for all,” comes at a time Ghana is grappling with an over 2 million units housing deficit.

The situation is made worse by the accelerated phenomenon of rural urban migration pushing several urban and peri-urban dwellers to choose the inhumane option of sleeping in the open, building shacks in waterways and densely crowded slums.

Speaking to Ultimate News, Dr Duah pointed out that the high cost of building materials most of which are imported into the country is a major contributory factor to Ghana’s huge housing deficit.

“Sadly, when you come to Ghana, a majority of our building materials are imported and once you import it, it is going to be more expensive than our local materials,” he noted.

He was however quick to admit that commercial production of local building materials like bricks and Pozzolana was still on the low and inadequate to feed the estate industry.

Dr Daniel Duah is demanding government policies to be fashioned out to create market for local materials; a move he believes will incentivise investors to begin producing these local alternatives.

“The other challenge on the policy side will be that wouldn’t it be possible for government to say for every government project can we do say twenty to thirty percent using local materials? When that policy direction is there then you give opportunity to business people to now go into major production because they know that government is a major employer,”

The department of Architecture also used the event to do an exhibition of master class architectural designs and prototypes the outfit has designed from the scratch.
The department is currently championing an ‘Adinkratecture’ project to model buildings after the traditional adinkra symbols.

Three Students from the department have also won awards for initiating a ‘bambotecture’ project to explore ways of using bamboo as a building material.

Meanwhile partners to the university; DBS Industries Company limited and its subsidiaries Supreme Concrete Products Cement made a call for greater collaboration between industry architecture departments of Universities to solve Ghana’s huge housing deficit.

Project and technical director with DBS Architect David Nyame Tawiah disclosed that the company is expanding its lead in the production of quality roofing sheets and building products.

He divulged that the company is venturing into cheaper building materials that can stand the test of durability and time.

Mr Nyaame Tawiah nonetheless indicated that the only threat to the quest to diversify building materials will be the conservative posture of Ghanaians towards change.