Green gold of Africa - Can growing native bamboo in Ethiopia become a commercially viable business?

摘要

With concerns about climate change and the search for sustainable construction materials, significant attention is now being paid to Africa's natural resources. Ethiopia, known as Africa's political capital, has a rapidly expanding economy with increasing demand for new construction materials. Through public private partnerships projects the country is developing a sustainable business model to promote bamboo as a raw material. The subtropical zone of Ethiopia is home to approximately 65% of Africa's bamboo resources, an area of over 1 million hectares. Bamboo is potentially an ideal source of local, sustainable purpose-engineered building materials for growing cities not only in Ethiopia but across Africa. Production of conventional construction materials such as steel and concrete is expensive, highly energy intensive and unsustainable, requiring large quantities of water and is strongly dependent on imported raw materials. Bamboo is a renewable building material widely cultivated in Ethiopia but not yet utilized in modern construction. Structural Bamboo Products (SBP), similar to engineered wood products, have excellent potential to partially replace the use of more energy-intensive materials. Projects such as African Bamboo are taking steps in managing, cultivating and using Ethiopian bamboo species to help mitigate rapid deforestation in East Africa by creating alternative "wood" sources and sustainable business opportunities