The Senegalese capital of Dakar is spreading in every direction. New houses - white, yellow, pink - some tiled and others rising towers of raw breezeblocks, are transforming the city. Senegal’s building boom is helped in part due to three cement companies in the country.
Building one’s own house, one floor at a time, is an accessible dream for those that can afford it. But environmentally speaking, the cement houses are energy deficient and badly insulated.
The more natural compressed earth bricks are competing for a piece of the building boom, but many emerging Senegalese associate the red bricks with 'peasant housing'.
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