Projects | Nature meets technology: Empowering rural students through sustainable design

These classrooms built from earth bricks are helping to bridge the digital divide in rural Zambia.

Imagine a girl child walking to school along a dirt road studded with mopani trees and the cold tracks of a leopard. Imagine this same girl arriving at school and sharing her classroom with 95 other children, one unpaid volunteer teacher, and a chalkboard. 

Now imagine that girl several years later and not much has changed… the road is still a dusty dirt track lined with mopani trees and leopard tracks. However this time, she arrives at an eco-friendly classroom with thick earthen walls that keep the heat of the Zambian summer and cold of winter outside. On the roof are multiple solar panels to ensure consistent electrical supply. Inside, the classroom is filled with natural light while the softly curving walls are topped with colourful glass bottle bricks that help to create a vibrant and dynamic learning environment.

Imagine this time that the girl is the teacher, and she’s teaching a small group of children while another group are using computer tablets to continue with their lessons. 

Elina Chilumba is one of Project Luangwa’s success stories of which CEO Ian Macallan is particularly proud. With the support of a sponsor, Elina went from being a dedicated learner to a young woman who completed teacher training. After university, Elina worked as a volunteer teacher at a local school for three years where she improved standards in English.

Nature and technology build community

In 2023, the Natural Building Collective was involved with building two classrooms for Project Luangwa as part of their Digilearn project, which provides a creative learning space for more than 100 kids. The Natural Building Collective was involved with the design, training, and providing technical experience, while Dawie Maree from Kranskop Bouers Pty Ltd, an experienced contractor, supported a local team of builders on site.

Project Luangwa needed classrooms that would transform the way students learn about and through technology while fostering a deeper connection to the breathtaking wildlife that surrounds them. For this reason, the idea of using earth bricks and recycled materials was particularly compelling.

Natural Building Collective architect, Emma McGregor [M(Arch) UCT PrArch24749217] was responsible for the design. The result is two beautiful resource-conscious buildings in harmony with the environment, and with minimal impact on nature and the surrounding habitats.

Peter McIntosh travelled to Luangwa to test the local earth and facilitate training for the local community over five days in April 2023. Some of the builders had previous building experience, but more than 50% were drawn from the parents of the local school children. 

The building team have shown tremendous pride in the process as well as the finished result, and many of the builders on the project have gone on to help Project Luangwa build at other sites, including a new Centre of Learning and Sport which also uses sustainable building techniques. Because natural building methods typically do not rely on as much material from off-site the process can be more labour-intensive, which has an added benefit of providing employment for the local area.

A harmonious and durable classroom

The design and material challenges of the area include its rural location with limited access to materials and resources, clay subsoil, and termites. As a result, it was necessary during construction to achieve a fine balance between the use of natural materials and the conscious use of concrete to achieve a finish that was low maintenance and would last a lifetime. 

The building site is situated on clay soil, which can shift significantly. As a result, concrete strip foundations were used as the first layer. The bricks for the stem wall were made from locally sourced red clay and sand, stabilised with small amounts of cement. Due to the clay content, lime was also added to enhance their strength.

A termite barrier is a galvanised zinc plate that sits on top of the stem wall and goes all the way around the building. It’s essential in the region, as one of our student-builders in neighbouring Zimbabwe discovered the hard way. Termites need to be in contact with the soil to live in the walls, so they build tunnels over the zinc sheets. These tunnels are easy to spot and dismantle.

After a series of tests, the walls were made from mud brick and mortar using local red clay earth, sand, and straw. One load of straw was needed from another area in Zambia.

This basic cob mix also formed the basis of the three plaster coats. The first was a rough scratch coat, followed by a hand-smoothed cob mix without straw, after which the walls were scratched. The final plaster coat was strong enough to be applied on the inside and the outside, and consisted of 70% sand, 10% red clay earth, and 20% lime.  

Both buildings feature mud brick arches, and the windows and doors were locally sourced and made by local craftspeople with wooden and concrete lintels. On top of the mud brick walls a concrete ring beam ties the building together in case there’s any movement. The pitched roof was sloped to the north to accommodate clerestory windows, while the open spaces were filled with a combination of mud bricks, cob, and glass-bottle bricks.

The original plan of using poles for the roof had to change as the local timber is only available untreated and the termites are too active to risk it. Instead, a small amount of steel was used for the roof structure which will also be much more durable.

The design features organic shapes and passive solar design that works through thermal mass and the correct orientation of the classrooms. At some point, shaded areas will be put up outside to contribute to the passive solar performance and create cohesion and flow between the two classrooms. 

Bridging the digital divide and empowering students with sustainable design

In many of our lives the use of technology has become so ubiquitous that it might seem curious that a classroom built from earth can help to promote digital literacy. But in 2023 nearly 40% of the global population still didn’t have internet access (Source: Our World in Data).   

In Zambia fewer than 15% of the population has access to the internet, and only about 5% have basic digital literacy skills, such as using the internet, email, or basic office software (ZICTA, 2022). Moreover, as Ian Macallan, CEO of Project Luangwa, shares: 

“Rural areas are particularly underserved due to infrastructure challenges. Women and girls in rural areas are less likely to have access to digital tools and the internet compared to their male counterparts.”

Project Luangwa now supports over 800 kids with Digilearn and they have reported impressive results, with the first cohort graduating with a 31% improvement in grades in 2023. 

The Digilearn project is a key part of Project Luangwa’s mission to provide “Community empowerment through the benefits of tourism, by improving education and gender equality in the Luangwa Valley”, which they achieve by improving educational standards, reducing teacher-to-pupil ratios, improving resources, and motivating kids and teachers in marginalised communities through supporting schools and deepening educational impact.

Project Luangwa’s local impact in 2023

Conclusion

In 2022, a year before the classrooms were built, Elina Chilumba was hired by Project Luangwa to lead the Digital Learning programme as it rolls out to different schools. But the whole community is being uplifted as the children’s levels of confidence have increased and more of them are finishing school and attaining higher-level qualifications, which is improving the livelihoods of many families in the local community.

According to Ian, because of the new earthen classrooms,

“The children are more eager to learn as the classrooms have also demonstrated investment in them, and have also boosted teacher motivation.”

As the Natural Building Collective, we believe that resource-conscious design and sustainable building that uses a hybrid of earth and alternative building materials are eco-friendly and future-forward. This project demonstrates that mud classrooms can be beautiful and structurally safe and sound when they’re designed and constructed well. 

We’re proud to have been a part of an initiative that empowers rural students through sustainable design, has demonstrated community involvement, and supports computer literacy. We hope that the classroom’s eco-friendly features will inspire students to engage with technology while being mindful of their natural surroundings. 

We would like to extend our gratitude to the Patel Family, whose generous support made this project possible.

Photo credits 

We are grateful to Mjose and Dawie for granting permission to use their photos in this blog post. 

• Mjose Jozie – Local Photographer
• Dawie Maree – Local Contractor and Photographer 

References

Hannah Ritchie, Edouard Mathieu, Max Roser and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina. (2023). Internet. https://ourworldindata.org/internet. Accessed: 6 August 2024 

Zambia Information and Communications Technology Authority. (2022). Zambia ICT sector performance report 2022. https://www.zicta.zm/2022_report.pdf. Accessed: 6 August 2024.