Building Schools in Malawi, Africa

BUILDING CONTINUES AT THE NEW
SECONDARY SCHOOL AT KAPANDA
IN MALAWI, AFRICA
BUT FUNDS ARE STILL NEEDED URGENTLY!

Map of Malawi showing the Nkhata Bay District where RIPPLE Africa is based

Education Video

Brick Making Video

PDF of
building
costs


The first double classroom block at Kapanda is now completed	Building the teachers' houses

Total Budget for Outstanding Building Work: March 2009
Quantity	Description	Unit Cost (GB£)	Total (GB£)
4	Single classrooms (double classroom block = £17,000)	£8,500	£34,000
2	Teachers' houses	£16,000	£32,000
7	Double toilet blocks	£2,800	£19,600
2	Laboratories	£10,000	£20,000
1	Library	£12,000	£12,000
1	Exterior work: games pitches, etc.	£3,000	£3,000
300	Desks	£25	£7,500
	Total		GB£128,100

Building Work Continues at the New Secondary School at Kapanda, Malawi, Africa
The area around Mwaya and Matete has been needing a secondary school for a very long time. The students used to walk 12km to the nearest secondary school each morning and then 12km home again in the evening, and we realised that building a secondary school must be a priority for the area. The school is located in a beautiful area of forest about 4km from Mwaya, and the site covers an area of approximately 30 acres. We started making the access road and clearing the site in March 2007, and building work started soon after this.

Building a school in Africa has been an enormous undertaking and raising the funds has been a struggle, but we have now completed two double classroom blocks, two teachers' houses, three toilet blocks, and a building comprising teachers' offices and secure storeroom, together with some ground preparation for a football pitch, a netball court, and a small agricultural project. The school opened in early 2008 and now houses Forms 1 and 2 with a total of approximately 120 students.


Mixing the soil and cement for the interlocking bricks	Putting the mixture into the brick press	Pressing the brick	Taking the pressed brick out of the press

We wanted to construct good quality buildings that would last for many years, so we decided to build the school using soil stabilised bricks which is a new technology for the area. A few years earlier, we had purchased a hand-operated interlocking brick press in Lusaka, Zambia, and we trained a team of six people to make the bricks for all of the buildings using this press. The bricks are made from a mixture of subsoil, cement, and a little water, and over 50 bricks are made from five wheelbarrows of soil and one bag of cement. The brick making team can make about 360 bricks per day. As the soil stabilised bricks are not strong enough for constructing the foundations for the buildings, the community has provided traditional burnt bricks for this purpose.


The bricks have to cure for about three weeks before they can be used	A view of the partially cleared site for the classroom blocks	Digging the foundations for one of the teachers' houses	The foundations for the first double classroom block

This is a very large and worthwhile project, and we will need more funding for additional classrooms, teachers' houses, toilets, etc., so that we can continue with the building programme. If you want an interesting project to raise money for, this could be the one for you (click here for building costs).

Not only are we building the structures, but we are also supplying desks and textbooks, and we need help to fund these — £25 pays for one desk and £8 pays for a textbook.


We are making our own hardwood desks at the Kapanda site	A double desk like this costs just £25	We are hoping to supply additional textbooks for the students — to buy a set of books for one student costs £80, and each book costs £8

Building a School in Malawi, Africa — New Secondary School Poster (PDF)
File size: 212KB

This poster about building a school in Africa can be printed for display on your noticeboard. Click on the picture on the left or click here to download this PDF document.

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