Jobbing Builders or Self Help for African Housing
| Date | 01 January 1961 |
| Author | G. A. Atkinson |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/j.1099-162X.1961.tb01258.x |
| Published date | 01 January 1961 |
Jobbing
Builders
or
Self
Help
for
African
Housing
by G.
A.
ATKINSON,
Head, Tropical Building Section, Building Research Station,
Department
cif
Scientific and Industrial Research
FACED
with competing needs
of
other
social services
and
of
agricultural
and
industrial development, few African governments
can
afford the money or
technical resources to house as a social service
more
than
aminority
of
urban
families.
Only
model or large employers
are
willing or
able
to house satisfactorily
many
of
their
workers.
The
mass
of
town dwellers, therefore,
have
to
depend
on
their own initiative, or on
that
of private entrepreneurs for shelter.
How
house-
building practices
have
developed in East Africa
and
how
government
can
encourage
more
and
better
urban
housing
are
discussed in the following notes.
Much
of
what
is
written
applies also to
other
parts
of Africa.
Away from the coast in East Africa
the
influences
of
alien building practices
are
quite recent, mostly little more
than
half
acentury.
Compared
with
West
Africa, or even the East African coast, indigenous African building methods
were primitive
with
possible exceptions like the now largely forgotten reed-and-
thatch
craft
of
the
Buganda
and
the
hut
building of
Uhehe
around
Iringa.
The
writings
of
early travellers confirm this. Baker,
who
reached Masindi
from the
north
in 1872, reported
that
the town
"as
usual
throughout
Unyoro
was exceedingly neglected
and
is composed
of
some thousand
large
beehive-
shaped straw huts,
without
any
arrangement
or
plan".
Baker
built
for himself
areception hall,
thatched
with
overhanging eaves
which
formed a
narrow
verandah
and
entered by a commodious porch,
"arched
in
the
native fashion",
the
inside walls being
neatly
made
with canes closely lashed together.
Portal, in
the
account
of
his mission to
Uganda
in 1893 illustrated behive-
shaped grass huts
at
Port
Alice (Entebbe).
There
is also
an
illustration
of
the
tomb
of Mtesa,
the
late
Kabaka
- a large conical-shaped
thatched
hut,
probably
the
only one still to be seen within
the
Lubiri, Mengo.
The
missionaries were
adopting
the
Ganda
reed-and-thatch
for their buildings, Bishop
Tucker's
first
church
at
Namirembe
being
built
in this way.
In
contrast, the huts
built
in
the
old Fort,
Kampala,
by
Lugard's
followers were
rectangular
with
mud-and-
wattle
walls on
the
pattern
of
the coastal Swahili.
By 1905,
the
walls of
Namirembe
cathedral
had
been
rebuilt
with
sun-dried
bricks
though
the
roof
was still
thatched
and
"beautifully decorated
with
native
reed work". But corrugated
iron
on
timber
frames was being used for
the
Uganda
Railway's buildings
and
for the sleeping sickness hospital
at
Kisumu. Five years
later, the
Kabaka's
residence
at
Mengo
had
acorrugated
iron
roof.
The
Indian
bazaar
at
Kampala
was a medley
of
corrugated
iron
sheds while
the
government
quarters
at
Entebbe
were being
built
of
brick
with
cement-concrete floors
and
corrugated
iron
roofs.
By
the
nineteen-thirties
Kampala
was a strange
mixture
of well-built
burnt
brick-and-tile structures, like
Namirembe
cathedral,
and
corrugated
iron
or
flattened petrol-tin shacks.
The
conical
Ganda
hut
was dying out.
Today
European
and
Asian contractors build with
the
same kind of materials
and
techniques found in Bristol
and
Bombay,
and
a few African contractors
have
46
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