The recent rise in construction costs in Kenya has made home ownership virtually unaffordable for many residents of the country.
And so the Kenyans decided to replace conventional bricks and mortar (which are not cheap there) with… polystyrene foam. It cannot be said that they showed miracles of ingenuity – similar polystyrene foam technologies are popular in Italy, the UAE, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Iran, Jamaica, Panama, Romania, Venezuela and South Africa… In short, in hot countries. And in Kenya, this technology is now being offered to construction companies by the National Housing Corporation.
Henrik Miako, director of Mikooh Exquisite Ltd, a real estate developer, used the new technology to build the four-story La Casa apartments in the Ole Kazasi area of Rongai. He believes that using polystyrene foam instead of traditional bricks helped to reduce costs by about 25 percent, and also halved the construction time.