The construction sector should move away from bricks and adopt modern building technologies.
Report informs that Hennie Botes, managing director of South African construction company Moladi Development, said this at the panel session titled "Developer Coalition for the Promotion of Productive Partnerships in the Global South, and Preliminary Presentation of the CAHF Housing Finance Yearbook 2025/2026," held as part of the 13th World Urban Forum (WUF13) in Baku.
Botes criticized traditional construction methods, describing bricklaying as an outdated technology dating back three millennia.
"The Egyptians were moulding bricks three and a half thousand years ago, and we are still doing the same thing. It is comparable to travelling from Johannesburg to Baku in a horse-drawn carriage," he stressed.
According to Botes, the construction sector urgently needs transformation: conventional approaches do not ensure sufficient speed or cost-effectiveness in housing construction, while generating significant amounts of waste and leaving a substantial carbon footprint.
He also noted that European architects are noticeably lagging behind in developing innovative solutions, continuing to rely on brick and mortar, while African countries are actively looking for alternative methods.
"I call for efforts to be focused on training millions of unemployed people in housing construction and food production skills, thereby combining solutions to two of the most pressing social problems," the managing director of Moladi Development added.