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May 27, 2015

Affordable Housing: Moladi's Hennie Botes on Innovation & Perseverance

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Hennie Botes founded Moladi in 1986, after building a global business as an entrepreneur and inventor.  His ability to think outside the box has led him to found a company that is revolutionizing the affordable housing market through design, innovation, and good-old fashioned ingenuity.

Can you tell us about how Moladi came about? How did you come up with the concept?

I think it starts with Abraham Maslow and food and shelter.  Without the basic needs of life, little else can happen.  So that's why housing is priority - across Africa and across the developing world.

But let's start at the very beginning. As it happened, my first invention was a plastic baby bath that fit across the bathtub and gave young mothers an easy and safe way to bathe their newborn children.  The design was sold the world over, and gave me the freedom to found Moladi. 

Moladi was the result of my own difficulties with building with brick and mortar. 

In South Africa, and many developing countries, we suffer from a colonial mentality.  Our education system does not teach us how to plant and grow food or build things.  And that is a tragedy. Africa will have to uplift itself, and learn how to build things itself.  

The challenge for so many local housing developments is the lack of skill. We know how difficult it was to put bricks on top of each other in a straight line, and, once the wall is built, to plaster it.

Moladi was a way I saw to build a construction system which could evolve into a job-creation tool itself, since it does not require skilled labor - in fact, over 90% of a construction team on a Moladi housing site consists of unskilled laborers.  

My first attempts at building the right mold was not exactly a success but the geese on the farm got a dam as result. Gradually, and this the way with all innovation, you learn from your mistakes.  The result was the Moladi building system.

You say system, and not house. What do you mean by that?

We're a system, a way of thinking, not simply a product, and that is why we are different. 

The Moladi building system, which incorporates green technology and sustainability also happens to provide the best solution to address six key challenges that hinder the successful implementation of low-cost housing projects in Africa:

- lack of sufficient funds
- shortage of skilled labourers
- lack of resources
- work flow control 
- time constraints 
- wastage. 

So the Moladi building system involves the use of a unique removable, reusable, recyclable and lightweight plastic formwork mould which is filled with an aerated SABS (South African Bureau of Standards) approved mortar to form the wall structure of a house in just one day.

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The process involves the assembly of a temporary plastic formwork mould the size of the designed house with all the electrical services plumbing and steel reinforcing located within the wall structure which is then filled with a specially formulated mortar mix to form all the walls simultaneously.

We use Moladi technology as a means to alleviate many of the cumbersome and costly aspects associated with conventional construction methods without compromising on the quality or integrity of the structure. When we first started, people would say things like Moladi structures won't last.  Now we have some that have been around for 30 years. From the very start, we were focused on solving the problem of affordable housing.

I thought the world would chop a path to our doorway asking for the solution, but it has't been that easy.  

And why is that? 

The masonry industry likes to protect its knowledge and its interests.  Change has never been easy. But now things are changing. Whether through necessity or because of desperation, we are seeing more and more interest from private partners and governments that view us as a building block for the country's future.

We work hard to gain social acceptance from the local communities we work in.  That is something that makes all the difference.  Add to that the we are cost effective, we create local jobs, and we are environmentally sustainable, and you understand why we are now growing at a much faster pace.  We've also added toilet systems, window and door systems, and kitchen systems to the Moladi system, all at a much lower cost than the hardware store.  Now we are in a position to say that we're world leaders at building entire village housing ecosystems.

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Are you finding interest for Moladi extends beyond Africa?

Yes, that is most definitely the case. We have been in Mexico, in Panama, in Haiti, across Africa, and now we are in talks in Nepal.  Moladi is currently deployed in 18 countries, reaching 20 within the next three months by adding India and Sri Lanka to our list.

You know, all materials used in the construction of Moladi homes, other than the formwork, are sourced and supplied from within the local community. Other than contributing to the local economy, this drastically reduces the need for additional and unnecessary transport and handling of goods and building materials. This follows from the logic that the fewer the number of operations, the higher the quality of the product, resulting in a predictive timeline and ultimately cost savings.

Can you tell us about the local benefits of building a village with Moladi?

For starters, the local impact is immediate.  We are a major job-creation strategy at the local level. But most important is the change in the lives of Moladi customers. A house is still a castle.  It is an asset for wealth creation and empowerment. 

We see three types of developments - upgrading informal settlements, green-field development, and rural village development.  Governments now understand how critical infrastructure and housing is for a prosperous future, for lifting citizens out of abject poverty.

That's really why we do this.

You mentioned sustainability.  How are Moladi houses more eco-friendly than traditional building techniques?

We have found that we are about 61% of the CO2 footprint for the same size of a house built with traditional brick and mortar.  That's because we don't use bricks at all, and two, we recycle our moulds which are used to build 50 houses out of one set of moulds.

Add to that the fact that a house is built in a day, and you significantly reduce material wastage.  That in itself adds to both cost effectiveness, cycle time, and sustainability.

What are your plans for the future?  

We are expanding across the world. And we are not just housing for the poor. We think that decent, beautiful houses don't have to be the province of wealthy citizens.  That is why design and aesthetics are important as well.  We want our houses to fill residents with joy and pride.  

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It is not an accident that developers in the richer countries protect their markets from competition.  But the world is getting smaller every day, and the tide is shifting.  We want to partner with private companies across the globe, creating new business for them as well as us.

Despite all the bad news you hear about in the news, I feel optimistic about the future, and the real impact Moladi is having on the war on poverty.

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Continue reading Affordable Housing: Moladi's Hennie Botes on Innovation & Perseverance.

January 13, 2015

Adrian Woolridge: "Capitalism begins at home"

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Once again The Economist’s Adrian Woolridge writes about the issues surrounding housing for the poor:

to fix the housing problem one has to solve a lot of others: obtaining land and getting permits; persuading banks to provide mortgages to poorer people; and getting sluggish utility firms to provide electricity and water connections.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle is desire.  The vested interests are not really interested in a systems-based solution.  Exhibit A = Haiti.

Until we get good governance, not much is going to change.

January 29, 2014

Whatever Happened to the $300 House?

The Harvard Business Review blog titled Whatever Happened to the $300 House? gives us less than half the story of what's been going on. I'd like to set the record straight for those of you who've asked: "what's going on?"

Here's a chart to explain the journey so far >>

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Part of the confusion stems from the idea of ownership.  You see, the $300 House is not a project with an "owner" per se.  Rather, it's an idea - to get individuals, businesses, and institutions to participate - collaboratively, if possible - to come up with solutions to solving the problem of affordable housing for the poorest of the poor.  

To me what matters is that the journey has actually begun, with individuals, institutions, and businesses working on it at their own pace. Some are choosing to work in an open spirit of collaboration, while others have chosen a more traditional, closed approach. Both are fine. But to say that the only thing that's happening with the $300 House is what's happening at Dartmouth is just missing the boat.  

June 15, 2011

$300 House: Open Design Challenge Winners

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What began as a challenge in a blog post on the Harvard Business Review website has resulted in a collection of 300 design submissions from around the world. The $300 House Open Design Challenge is complete, with judges picking their final selections after much deliberation, and an extension, in order to go through the entries in detail.


Winners were selected in combination with votes from the community and a panel of judges comprised of expert designers, architects, and thought leaders. The winners share $25000 in total prize money which includes $10,000 in cash awards to the top 16 placements as voted by the community itself, and $15,000 in scholarships to attend a prototyping workshop for six participants (three selected by the community, and three by the judges panel).

The winners of the prototyping workshop scholarship are (listed by username):

An award of recognition for corporate participation goes to a team from Mahindra Partners - the jurors decided to judge corporate entries separately.


 
"We're delighted by the depth and breadth of the submissions we received," says Vijay Govindarajan, Professor of International Business and the Founding Director of Tuck's Center for Global Leadership. "Hosting this contest on Jovoto's open, co-creation platform gave us a wealth of ideas and identified the people who we believe have the passion, skill, and commitment, to take the project to the next level, prototyping and actually building a $300 house for the poor. We invite all the participants to continue the discussion at www.300house.com."

June 10, 2011

Our Rebuttal to the $300 House Op-Ed in the NY Times

Have they stopped fact-checking at the New York Times

That's the question I asked myself when I saw the op-ed they ran on the $300 House.

VG and I wrote a rebuttal - here - on the Harvard Business Review blog.

Please let us know what you think by posting your comments at HBR, underneath the rebuttal.

May 27, 2011

299 Design Ideas for the $300 House

Thanks to everyone for their enthusiasm and support!  VG and I are thrilled to see the creative suggestions and the spirit of co-operation that became more and more evident as the $300 House Open Design Challenge went along. 

Special thanks to the Jovoto team - Nathalie, Nadine, Peter (x2), Bastian, and Shaun at Mutopo for making this happen - without your generosity we'd never have gotten off the ground.  Thanks also to Scott Tew from Ingersoll Rand for your willingness to try this experiment.

Now, let the judging begin!

April 9, 2011

Shraya's Interview: The $300 House

shraya.gifThe following questions were sent to VG and Christian by Shraya, a 4th grader in Miss Mancosh's class. Her mentor for this project is Miss Emily Pasquale. Thanks for your questions, Shraya!

How does your organization work?
We are not a formal organization - simply a collection of concerned individuals and companies trying to find a solution to the problem of low-cost housing for the poorest people on our planet.  So our "job" is to help people come together - across organizations, businesses and governments - to solve the problem.

How do you plan to get the money to construct these houses?

We are not planning on asking anyone to fund us as an organization, but rather to fund different projects or phases. For example we are getting ready to have a design challenge where we ask people to submit their plans for a $300 House. We would like to offer the winning team(s) a small financial reward for their hard work and the opportunity to join a prototyping workshop where we will build a $300 House. This may be done through sponsorship. We already have a sponsor: The Center for Energy Efficiency and Sustainability (CEES) at Ingersoll Rand, and we're talking to others as well.

Does your organization operate all around the world?
Yes and no.  We have members from all the different continents who have signed on because they are interested in solving the problem.  But we are not a formal organization, so we don't spend any money operating anywhere.

What are challenges in building houses outside the USA?
Great question. The biggest challenge for poor people anywhere is money - they don't have enough money to buy land or to buy a house. Sometimes they lack the money to even rent a place to live and have to resort to living in anything they can find that gives them some protection from the elements.

Our hope is that we can create affordable houses which are comfortable and durable enough to provide the poor with a safe place to live. Every country has different issues, and we're going to have to understand what they are to be successful.

Are you constructing any houses in India currently?
No, not yet. But India is one of the countries we want to build a few test houses, to see how they work. Other countries we are thinking about to start this project are Haiti and Indonesia.

Are you working with other charities? If so what are they?

We plan on working with charities and businesses. You see, we think businesses can make money and help poor people at the same time. It's simply a matter of designing the house at a price that poor people can afford. We are also working with non-profits like the Solar Electric Light Fund, and shortly, we hope, with Partners In Health.  In India we are talking to a number of non-profits as well. Of course, we welcome everyone!

What type of problems have you encountered so far?
What problems?  If it was easy, the problem would have been solved a long time ago. So we don't really view our difficulties as problems, but rather as a way to learn.  You can't run without falling, and we're learning to fall quite well!

How has the response been so far about this initiative?

Tremendous. We have people like you writing us - and we have almost 800 people from all over the world who want to do something about this issue.  It's great!

What is it like being in this organization?
It's fun to try to do something that most people think can't be done.  And what will be really cool is if we succeed! Wish us luck - and send in your design for the $300 House.

VG and I love that kids are getting into this project along w/ the adults. Here's an example of a submission from another concerned citizen of the planet >>

Continue reading Shraya's Interview: The $300 House.

March 10, 2011

Building a $300 House for the Poor: HBR interviews VG

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VG explains the rationale behind the $300 House. Watch >>

February 26, 2011

The $300 House in the City: Sunil Suri on the Urban Challenge

Sunil Suri, one of our advisors, has posted an insightful look at how the $300 House might end up in an urban setting. He answers the critics who say that the $300 House is simply a waste of space in the crowded cities of the emerging world.

Read all about the Urban Challenge on the Harvard Business Review blog>>

January 21, 2011

Alex Fisberg: Snapshots from India and Brazil

The following snapshots are from Alex Fisberg, a Brazilian journalist in India. He sent in the photos to share with folks working on the $300 house.

Alex’s blog - Um Jornalismo Social - is here >>

Scenes from India

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Scenes from Brazil:
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An opportunity for the $300 House…

January 8, 2011

Raj Anand: On Converting a Slum to a Sustainable Community

Editor's note: Raj Anand is the President & CEO of Southern States LLC. He shares his thoughts on slum renewal with us >>

Almost all urban areas of the world have slum dwellers, developed countries have slums and developing countries have slums.  The common elements and operations of all such areas can be looked at from a systems science standpoint. 

Essentially in any slum or slum equivalent boundary, each resident is an open subsystem exchanging resources with the larger system at its boundary.  Each subsystem is driven to optimize its own resource exchange with the larger entity at its boundary with limited or no regard for other subsystems in the slum boundary.  This dynamic leads to the creation of a perpetual slum.  Once this dynamic is changed the slum can be transitioned to a sustainable perpetually improving community, with a developed infrastructure. 

The question is then: Change the dynamics to what?

Link the open subsystems of the slum into goal oriented closed slum system which trades resources at the limited interfaces at the boundary with the larger system in an organized way to the benefit of the slum system

How to bring about the change?


  • Map all the resource interchanges between the slum subsystems and the larger system.  This can be done by collecting data of revenue flow into the slum area and revenue outflow from the slum area.
  • Diverting a large part of the revenue flow going out of the slum area to circulate inside the slum area by setting up services needed by the subsystem by the residents of the system ( example if residents are getting al their food supplies outside the system, set up a small food supply business inside the system run by a resident)
What social/political/economic infrastructure is needed? How to develop the social /political/economic infrastructure?

This needs input from social political scientists, the key is to organize as a self directed, sustainable entity with controlled interface with the outside system to move the equilibrium point to higher standard of living.

What physical infrastructure is needed?

Housing, potable water, sewer system, sanitation, toilets, electricity, medical care, education, communications. Prioritize the physical infrastructure needs and find creative way to generate these, for example if the infrastructure element is at the end of the value chain where its value has been exhausted by the larger system it can be recycled into the slum system.

An example of this end of life planned value chain:

If a dual purpose shipping container is developed which maximizes the space usage of trailers, the slum system can provide a service for picking up discarded containers for a fee and recycle them inside the slum system as building blocks for houses.  The residents would actually build the houses.

The shipping containers could be developed and promoted by trucking companies for it would improve their hauling capacity utilization.  This would also save wood and diminish landfill space needed for discarded wood crates.

Each of the other Physical infrastructure needs could also be filled by creative value chain ideas.

Finally, once a self contained community is created it can be relocated as a whole self contained community to a better geographical location if physical improvements or land title is not possible at the current location.

How do we begin?

Let's bring together three coordinated Grad School  Teams to:

  1. Map the revenue flow of the slum & recommend changes for conservation of the value flow inside the slum
  2. Study the existing Social, political ecosystem and recommend changes to build a closed system with limited interfaces with the larger system
  3. Creative value chain ideas to provide physical infrastructure

I'm interested in hearing your feedback in the comments section below.