Overview

PROECCO (Promoting employment through climate responsive construction) is a program of the Swiss Cooperation Development Agency (SDC) implemented by Skat Consulting (Switzerland, Rwanda, Burundi, South Kivu in RDC). It supports the creation of decent jobs promoting the use climate-responsive construction materials and technologies all along the housing supply value chain.

The target group are the young labourers and entrepreneurs willing to pioneer environmentally friendly modern production of clay-based building materials, as well as other key actors across the supply chain who help improve housing affordability.

To date, the project has supported many actors across the value chain (producers, service providers, design professional, financial advisors), successfully introduced and demonstrated efficient brick production technologies and improved, more affordable housing solutions that are being used in private and public developments and urban upgrading and transformation processes across the region. [136 words]

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The current technologies for energy efficient building material production in the Great Lakes Region are economically not viable for mass scale dissemination. Since 2013, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)’s PROECCO programme (PROmoting Employment through Climate-responsive Construction), implemented by Skat Consulting Ltd, has served as a key facilitator in the transformation of the local construction sector. With the objective of unlocking urbanization’s economic potential and social benefits while reducing its negative environmental impact, the project creates “Green” and labour-friendly business opportunities in the local industry. Through active collaboration with the local private sector, brickmakers, authorities, national and international academia, and experts, and with the strategic guidance of SDC, the PROECCO team has developed a host of locally adaptable building material production and construction solutions for SMEs. This has allowed local investors to establish commercially viable supply chains for affordable locally sourced urban houses. The measures are designed to stimulate business opportunities for raw-material suppliers, machine workshops, local brick making clusters, planners, masons, real estate developers and authorities, thereby forging a framework for entirely locally supplied urbanization.

At the same time, authorities and private brick makers are supported in accessing most relevant data, literature, and expertise. Through industry facilitation services local authority officers will be capacitated to implement new policies in a most effective manner.

For some years these measures, and their support mechanisms have been designed for large-scale sector transformation-targeting over one thousand semi-industrial brickyards, thousands of small and medium construction forms and hundreds of specialized service providers, all employing hundreds of thousands of rural migrants and reducing deforestation and Co2 emissions.

All the modern brickyards are operated with biowaste fuel instead of firewood and directly reduce the pressure on local forest. CO2 emissions of 3 million T per year can be reduced once all the brickyards are operated at full capacity.

Informal Settlement Upgrading
In Rwanda, the project is implemented in partnership with the Ministry of Infrastructure (MININFRA) based on the bilateral MoU between the Republic of Rwanda and Swiss Confederation. In September 2020 an additional MoU has been signed between SKAT and the City of Kigali (CoK) to support neighbourhood upgrading in Kigali using a participatory Rehousing Strategy within unplanned/informal settlements in the Mpazi sub catchment area, and other cells in Kigali. Since 2021, in the framework of the PSUP program, UNHABITAT supported the process leading to the participatory neighbourhood and architectural design.
The partnership is intended to facilitate the planning, design, and the implementation of this project by establishing a scalable rehousing process supported by green, strong, and affordable construction material, efficient design and participatory approach, configured for large scale replication, by promoting additional public and private investments.

Community participatory planning
Community engagement is fundamental to voluntary in-situ rehousing, which underpinned by a consensus-based approach. A series of dialogue and consultations, transparency and mutual respect are key elements in the approach and ensured throughout the process. There are three levels of community engagement: dwelling unit level, building block level, and neighbourhood level. The partnership with UN-Habitat under PSUP programme supported PROECCO int the participatory process at the neighbourhood-level with the establishment of a Community Working Group (CWG) recognised by local institutions and residents. Followed by the participatory assessment and mapping which addressed the lack of public spaces, limited connectivity, and safety issues, PROECCO has supported the co-design of the entire 4-ha neighbourhood integrating proposed solutions identified by the CWG. The remaining land, now under the ownership of the City, would then be used for the construction of hard and soft infrastructure and will be made available to generate investment opportunities with private sector, attracted by the prime location of the site and the now upgraded settlement, hence partly cross financing the project. [617 words]