Results & Impacts

A Summary of the overall results & impacts to date (Nov 2012)

The main results so far:

• Since the start of the program, 1,628 vaults * have been built by NV masons and entrepreneurs, for 707 clients, in 306 locations (villages, hamlets, towns) in 5 countries of the Sahel (Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, Benin, and Mauritania)
•  If all the vaults built were placed end-to-end, this would reach a total length of 12 km
• 85% of NV buildings are houses, and 15% are for community use (churches, mosques, community centers, schools...)
• 261 NV masons have been trained, of whom half are at the foreman and/or entrepreneur level
• There are currently over 300 apprentices in training
• Since 2000 the program has experienced an average annual growth rate of 34%.

* NB: a standard vault , our unit of measurement, has internal dimensions of 7M long X 3,25 M wide - most village houses comprise one or two vaults)

And we estimate the impacts of the Program as being:

• 12,000 people use, live in, or sleep in NV buildings;
• 19,000 corrugated iron roofing sheets have been economized
• 2,200 trees, have been saved, and 3,200 tons of CO2-equivalent economized,  as a result of NV construction, as compared to the alternatives
• 1,200,000 Euros of local economic impacts have been generated.

One of the most encouraging outcomes is that over one-third of the NV construction market is now completely autonomous and self-sustaining: 35% of NV clients are found directly by NV builders / entrepreneurs. Of the remainder, 40% come via a local intermediary or ’champion’, and only 25% via AVN itself. So, in the regions where AVN is active, we are well on the way to a growing and independent market in NV construction, permitting us to soon move on and target our resources in new regions.

Read a Summary of Results & Impacts 2011-12 (13 pages, pdf, 600K)