Our actions

Kickstarting activities are at the heart of AVN’s programme and are carried out by local AVN teams and their partners they work with.

Together they carry out awareness-raising activities aimed at three target groups: rural populations (the programme’s core target), urban populations and institutional actors and those involved in development.

From this awareness-raising work and advocacy a demand for construction projects has emerged that AVN supports, by connecting clients with artisan masons and by monitoring and inspecting worksites. Qualified and independent masons pass on the NV construction technique on-site to their apprentices as part of a mentoring-based approach. The first Nubian Vaults that were built had a significant demonstration effect in terms of promoting AVN’s approach as well as the masons themselves.

For years, AVN activities focused on the emergence of NV clients in order to initiate a market which would de facto help structure supply. The growth of the market and the diversification of NV clients largely demonstrated the relevance of the technical concept and how well-adapted it is to current conditions and future challenges.

Today, in order to accelerate the speed at which the housing challenge is dealt with, AVN must promote and coordinate the strengthening and diversification of the adapted construction sector.

For the past three seasons, this strategic focus has been AVN’s priority. It has invested in human resources, created new hubs of activity (technical and entrepreneurial), developed methodologies to strengthen training aimed at all sectoral actors, and worked to create a corps of advisor masons, custodians of NV knowledge. AVN also supports these professionals by working on expertise and technical development and by carrying out research.

Today, the programme’s maturity and its goal of galvanizing the market and developing a durable NV sector has led AVN to raise awareness and involve direct and indirect actors from the housing and construction sectors, whether public, private, regional, national or international: ministries, public agencies, local authorities, international donors, etc.

These actors are responsible for housing issues in all their related forms: economic, legislative, vocational training and job-related, environmental impacts and adaptation to climate change. Governments therefore have an immediate interest in ensuring that, on the one hand, people have access to adapted housing and to a job and that, on the other hand, actors from the construction sector are involved in helping the sector evolve in a positive way.

AVN therefore encourages political actors to support the NV market and to integrate it into national and regional development plans and into national construction programmes. AVN is also carrying out international advocacy activities on issues of housing for as many as possible and leads a collective of actors from both the North and the South committed to the transformation of building practices in Africa