Woodless construction: an overview
Practical Action
then other donors joined, including Lutheran World Relief and the Danish Red Cross. During the
1990s this support enabled regular training to take place in Niger and Mali, and as of 1995, in
Burkina Faso.
Burkina Faso is today the base of the Woodless Construction programme, where DW, supported
primarily by the European Union, trains hundreds of builders each year. Meanwhile, with a good base
of trained builders in Niger and Mali, woodless construction continues to be used without a support
programme, which is as it should be.
The key to successful training and the ability of the builders to then work on their own has been the
development by DW of a very structured mason training curriculum, tested and improved through the
1990s and still subject to improvements. This is based on the Woodless Construction Trainers Guide
(11th Edition), that details every step in the training process and the structures that need to be used
and built during the training.
Basic training for novice builders is divided into two periods. It starts with a three week period of
theoretical explanation and practice when trainee builders work on carefully designed training
structures with a team of trainers and assistant trainers. The second part of training is more open
ended, when each trainee builds
(and pays for) his own woodless
house under the supervision of
an assistant trainer, which gives
the trainee the complete
experience of building a
structure from start to finish, and
just as important, provides a full
scale ‘visiting card’ in his home
locality and helps develop his
future clientele. (For more
detailed information on the
organisation and content of the
training cycles, including training
for experienced Woodless
Construction masons, see
Woodless Construction -2: The
training of trainers and builders
in this series of case studies).
Impact and accessibility
Across the Sahel there are now
thousands of woodless buildings,
built by trained builders for
themselves, for others in their
community, and for private and
public clients and NGOs. In
some villages Woodless
Construction is now the
predominant roofing method. The
mason Youma Karim in Kelbo
village, north western Burkina
Faso, has steadily been replacing
Figure 7: Spontaneous construction with no external help is the all the houses and structures in
benchmark: here, a 15 dome mosque north of Zinder, Niger.
his hamlet using woodless
construction. In other villages the
trained masons have come together to offer help to people wanting to build without wood. They know
that carrying on cutting trees for building is no longer an option – and that woodless construction is
not just a choice, but a necessity. Every 31m2 dwelling built without wood represents a saving of
about 56 linear metres of beams and 12m³ of wooden battens – about 8 cartloads.
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