Construction 3D printing in Africa: this is just the beginning

I will always remember the 2020 US election night which I spent awake, not only to know who would be the winner, but to await the call from one of my team members who was in the middle of rural Malawi trying to 3D print a school. This call would tell me if the 3D printed wall would stand up (and it did!).

Almost one year on I can say that introducing construction 3D printing in Africa has been an amazing, inspiring and tremendously rewarding journey. We built the first 3D printed school in the world, and the first 3D printed house in Africa.?

This breakthrough generated a lot of enthusiasm – which me and the 14Trees team deeply share – about the potential of this technology to solve the housing and school backlog in Africa. It also gave us some tough – and very fair – questions. Many of them came here, on LinkedIn, and so it is here where I would like to address them.?

As a preamble, I would like to share what I always say about construction 3D printing: this is a journey - don’t expect 3D printing to be good or bad by nature, it is evolving and it is up to us to make the technology useful for low to middle income people, those that technologies can easily leave behind.?

So, here are my answers to the main questions we got.?

?“Does 3D printing save up to 70% of CO2?”

YES. Building with 3D printing reduces CO2 emissions up to 70% when compared to the conventional construction method Malawi uses -- burnt bricks. Experts at the Holcim Innovation Center performed a Life Cycle Assessment, endorsed by the Solar Impulse Foundation; the summary of that study can be downloaded here. It showed that a 3D printed house emits 70% less CO2 than a conventional house (for a 3D printed classroom, that figure is 50% less CO2). With the results of this study, the independent experts of the Solar Impulse Foundation endorsed 14Trees’ 3D printing solution.

The CO2 figure will vary by country and the building method it is compared to, but no matter where it is deployed, 3D printing uses less materials which ultimately makes it a green solution for the planet.

“Is 3D printing really that fast?”

YES. The house in Lilongwe, Malawi had walls printed? in 12 hours, and those of the school in Salima district were printed in 18 hours. Our ambition is to print more units at the same time, within the same 12-18 hour timeframe, using the same machine. From the site mobilization to hand over, we believe a house and a school can be fully completed? in less than a month. This is our target for upcoming projects. As a comparison, construction of school blocks in Malawi usually takes between 2 to 3 months with brick and mortar.?

“Does 3D printing save cost?”

YES. Our customers will experience this. But we need to be clear once again that it is a journey: the first prototypes will not reach the price per m2 as the industrialized version we ultimately envision. 14Trees is in a race to take that technology to a level where it is competing with conventional construction methods, and we’re leading that race! We are within shooting range of the cheapest and least environmentally-friendly competitors in our sites -- such as burnt bricks. As we announced, we believe we can build an affordable 45m2 house for less than USD 10,000. Over the last months we have gotten close to that price point, by launching the production of the 3D printing ink in Malawi and Zimbabwe and through optimizing the structural design of our buildings.? Volume is also a key driver taking the cost per unit down.? As explained earlier, with one printer we can print up to 3 units at the same time and those production volumes make the upfront investment in the printer a rather small share of the build cost per unit.? In the end, we can always debate whether the cost per m2 is cheap enough - what matters is that low to middle income customers get the best value for money and they will have anyway the final word!?

“Is 3D printing removing jobs?”

Honestly, yes, but it creates more jobs than it removes: we are substituting low-skilled jobs with higher-skilled jobs. Net job creation was an integral part of our investment case and remains a KPI of 14Trees’ shareholders, Holcim and CDC Group. It is true that 3D printing removes the activity of the brick layers, which usually involves 4 or 5 people per job site. But across our pilot projects in Malawi we have shown that the same bricklayers can be involved in the printing operations. In our pilots, we trained them in machinery operations and maintenance, and they received a higher pay than they did as bricklayers, who are among the lowest paid positions on site. 3D printing also creates new jobs across the value chain and in particular in the production of the printing ink. In Malawi, we now have set up an ink-producing unit in Lilongwe. In Zimbabwe, Lafarge Zimbabwe (a member of Holcim) opened a new dry mortar facility which will soon manufacture the ink we will use to print houses. Without 3D printing, these jobs simply would not exist.?

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It is up to us to use that technology to create homes, schools, clinics -- and jobs -- for all.?

What lies ahead of us is a massive challenge: finding innovative ways to give access to housing to 1.2 bn people who cannot afford to live in decent accommodation. Same applies to schools: in Malawi alone, there is a need to build more than 40,000 classrooms and at today’s pace it would take more than 70 years.?

This is not about opposing traditional construction and 3D printing: it is about applying the best methods where they are needed, in a way that really helps to reach scale faster.??

14Trees remains the largest producer of Soil Stabilized bricks in Malawi, and probably one of the largest in Africa, because our Durabrics are perfect for self construction and house extension. 3D printing will be one more tool - and we believe a truly disruptive one -? to take affordable housing projects to scale and clear the housing and school backlog much faster.?

3D printing is still in its infancy -- not only in Africa but everywhere in the world. We have a unique opportunity to take 3D printing in a direction that will make it useful to build more sustainable homes, schools and clinics in Africa.? At 14Trees our vision is for 3D printing to be a technology produced by and for Africans. We are creating that future through partnerships, such as the one we just signed with the Kenyan Association of Architects, to ensure that architects become ‘3D ready’ and can draw 3D printable designs rooted in African architectural habits.

In the coming months, we will build more houses in Kenya, Zimbabwe and Nigeria, just to name a few, and every project delivered will help us demonstrate its commercial viability and full potential.????

As we like to say: #thisisjustthebeginning!, so stay tuned for some exciting news in the coming weeks.