Low-carbon and cost-effective design solutions for rural housing in Uganda

The housing crisis in Africa, exacerbated by rapid population growth and inadequate infrastructure, demands sustainable and cost-effective construction solutions. This paper presents a research initiative focused on developing low-carbon and affordable housing for rural Uganda, em-phasizing the use of locally available materials and innovative con-struction technologies. A service-learning approach, in collaboration with the non-profit organ-ization I Bambini di Antonio, enables the practical application of re-search through the design and implementation of Il Villaggio di Anto-nio, a pilot rural housing project in Uganda. The general research meth-odology includes an extensive context analysis, the identification of al-ternative sustainable construction solutions, adaptive comfort-based design for a sustainable rural village model, experimental material test-ing and the realization of the pilot project. The first three steps have already been developed and are presented in this article, while the additional two phases will serve as validation for the completion of the research. Findings confirm the feasibility of merging traditional and modern sus-tainable technologies to create replicable, community-driven housing models. Future research will focus on refining construction techniques, expanding real-world applications and assessing the socio-economic benefits of these solutions. Additionally, further investigation will ex-plore the scalability of the proposed model and evaluate the technical and economic feasibility of 3D printing in this context. This study con-tributes to global discussions on sustainable development by propos-ing a scalable framework for low-carbon housing in Central and Tropical Africa.