Engineering: issues, challenges and opportunities for development ...

ENGINEERING: ISSUES CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR DEVELOPMENT Sample brick walls usingKgalagadi sand.354The provision of electricity in a rural setting through the centralizedpower station successfully impacted on the living conditions,especially as the school and local clinic were connectedto an electricity supply and some businesses started to mushroomdue to the availability of power. Pupils are now able tostudy at school when it is dark and electronic teaching aids cannow be used. The clinic mortuary is connected to the powersupply, and the diesel generator that was previously used isnow on standby. After monitoring the efficacy of this project,the Botswana Government is now being approached to providefunding that will enable replication of similar projects inother remote rural settings.Kgalagadi Sand Building Block projectKgalagadi (also written as Kalahari) is the name of the tropicalsemi-arid desert that occupies about three-quarters of Botswana.The desert is composed of sandy soil, which is unsuitablefor making conventional building blocks/bricks in thecountry. Kgalagadi sand is a very narrowly graded cohesionlesssoil, which alone is not immediately usable for brick production(compared to the scarce sand from the dry rivers). Thesand is generally fine and has high porosity and thus very difficultto bond and make relatively strong bricks. The difficulty ofmaking strong bricks results in non-durable houses for manyof the poor people residing in villages in the Kgalagadi desert.The objective of the Kgalagadi Sand Building Block project hasthus been to render Kgalagadi Sand usable for the productionof a fit-for-purpose and cost-effective block/brick. The R&Dcomponent of this project involves the engineering of a buildingblock of stipulated strength and durability using Kgalagadisand as major raw material. The other important raw materialsare calcrete and fly ash. Calcrete resources are availablebelow the sand level in Botswana, and fly ash is also abundantat the Morupule thermal coal power station. The dumped flyash from the power station poses an environmental hazardtherefore its use in bricks would provide a much-needed solutionfor fly ash disposal. The fly ash can ultimately be packagedand sold to people to mix with Kgalagadi sand and calcrete© BOTEC Internal Technical Reportsto make a mortar that results in strong bricks and durablehouses.Preliminary tests produced the desired outcome of relativelystrong building blocks. The resultant stabilized compressedearth block has successfully been taken through differentstages of the curing regime and requisite tests have beencompleted. This project, mainly championed by BOTEC’s civilengineers, will move into the technology transfer stage whereBOTEC will decide how to take the product or productionknowledge to the people in order to improve the strength ofthe housing units.The Kgalagadi Sand Building Block project is seen as a researchachievement in exploiting the immense desert sand resourcethat occupies three-quarters of the country. The projectderives from the following socio-economic circumstances inBotswana:■■The need to facilitate construction of durable and affordablehousing units.The need to maximize local production of building materials.■ The need to reduce stress on the national road infrastructuredue to bulk transportation of massive loads of buildingmaterials or raw materials over long distances (for example,most of the river sand for making building blocks/bricks istransported from the eastern strip of Botswana to towns inthe western desert lands).■The need to ‘Ensure Environmental Sustainability’ (UN MillenniumDevelopment Goal No. 7) through the use of desertsand.Community User Information Systems – Kitsong CentresThe Community User Information System project was developedto address the interrelated problems of the lack of accessto information and knowledge resources for rural people andthe lack of affordable communication channels capable ofreaching rural communities. The main objective of the pilotproject was to develop a computer communication systemthat enables access to integrated email and online informationfor rural people in Botswana, with emphasis on the online disseminationof locally generated, user friendly, relevant informationand knowledge resources. The aim was to providecost-effective access to and dissemination of information andknowledge resources, subsequently saving hardcopy productions,mailing, transport and transaction costs. Moreover, thecomputer network aspired to become a forum of informationand knowledge exchange for local communities, researchcentres and local business entities. It was also a contributionto Botswana’s full entry into the information and knowledge