On International Women's Day, read the stories of women who are #AcceleratingAction in their communities as part of Habitat's Home Equals campaign.
Start Somewhere – which develops construction solutions for informal settlements – has designed TwistBlocks, a reusable, firesafe modular construction material designed to respond to the needs and feedback of Kibera’s residents. The company’s staff, many of whom live in Kibera themselves, are helping lead a new way of building homes in Kenya. Through policy and systems change, partners in the Home Equals campaign want to support and help scale up innovative solutions taking shape within informal settlements.
In seeking construction solutions that will work in the challenging conditions presented by informal settlements, a Kenya-based company called Start Somewhere didn’t just start anywhere. It started with the people of Kibera, one of Africa’s largest informal settlements. The startup, which is committed to hiring staff from Kibera, developed its technology after getting heavy input from the community, including longtime builders in Kibera. The result: TwistBlocks, hollow, pre-cast concrete blocks that fit together like Legos, with no need for mortar joints. Originally set up as a social enterprise registered in Germany, today Start Somewhere operates locally as a registered company in Kenya – Start Somewhere Kenya Ltd. – led by a Kenyan executive team.
The company’s local staff include Milka Achieng, who leads the main production facility in the heart of Kibera and knows first-hand the challenges of securing decent, affordable housing. Born and raised in Kibera, the 31-year-old still lives in the densely populated urban center. Start Somewhere is committed to hiring and training local staff, particularly women and youth – defined in Kenya as under age 35. That’s one of the main ways this sheltertech startup aims to “change living conditions of vulnerable communities from the inside.” Milka joined Start Somewhere in 2019. Like most of Start Somewhere’s employees, Milka was recruited from the community with little technical experience and received on-the-job training. She learned quickly and was promoted into a leadership role. Today, as Factory Head, Milka leads the six-person production team at Start Somewhere’s main TwistBlock facility, right in the heart of Kibera.
Like most of her neighbors, Milka’s home in Kibera, where she lives with her daughter, is built of mud walls and an iron-sheet roof. It’s challenging for families to access high-quality, affordable building materials, particularly ones that are adapted to construction contexts of informal settlements. Private companies are often unfamiliar with either the size or the needs of their potential low-income customer base, and they lack incentives – such as subsidies or research and development grants – to take a risk on introducing new products to help low-income families build better. But Milka knows that homes in informal settlements don’t have be built from low-quality materials, and she’s working to make affordable, alternative housing solutions available in her community and across Kenya.
“Kibera is my home,” Milka said. “I want to see Kibera transformed from mud and iron sheet housing to beautiful permanent housing. This is why I go to work every day to create the TwistBlocks at Start Somewhere’s factory.”
TwistBlocks are hollow, pre-cast concrete blocks. They are formed by pouring wet concrete into a mould. Unlike traditional cinder blocks, also called CMU blocks, TwistBlocks are designed to interlock when stacked, creating secure walls without the need for mortar. They are named for their unique shape – one end rounded outwards, the other inwards – which allows adjacent blocks to “twist” while remaining locked together, offering additional design flexibility without compromising structural stability. Because of this, a home built with TwistBlocks can be completed up to 10 times faster than one using standard masonry techniques.
Decreasing construction time and cost is valuable to any homebuilder, but TwistBlocks’ unique design also addresses challenges that are particular to residents of informal settlements, like Kibera, where land rights are precarious, and plots are often irregularly shaped. With the design flexibility of TwistBlocks, it’s easier to maximize use of space within an oddly shaped or less-accessible plot. Additionally, because constructing with Twistblocks doesn’t require mortar or plaster finishing, if a family needs to move, they can take apart their home – block by block – and move them, with their other possessions, to their new site and rebuild, without losing their investment in the building materials. Similarly, families building their homes incrementally based on their cashflow can easily take out sections of wall to create doorways and add additional rooms.
Two of the biggest housing risks in Kibera are floods and fires. Homes in the informal settlement are packed densely together with limited public utilities and poor-quality living spaces. Most homes are not formally connected to the electrical grid and instead get their power from a tangled web of overhead wires that crisscross above – and at times straight across – the narrow walking paths. Fires are often sparked by families trying to light or cook in their homes and they spread quickly through the walls of homes built directly abutting each other from highly flammable materials, such as plywood and timber. TwistBlocks, by contrast, are fire-resistant and provide decent shelter. The air inside the hollow blocks has strong insulating properties, helping keep the interior of the home or other building cooler in the hot months and warmer when the temperature dips in the dry season.
Adjacent to Start Somewhere’s workshop in Kibera is a school – simple in design, except for the round, colourful two-story extension built from TwistBlocks. The extension, which was donated by Start Somewhere, houses a staffroom and library. The feedback from students and staff has been overwhelmingly positive. “The library offers a conducive learning environment for the students,” Milka explains. “It impacts them positively and motivates them to study, as it offers a completely different environment from what they encounter at home.”
Kibera’s residents – particularly those working as masons – have been involved at every step in the design process, providing feedback on the size and portability of the blocks, which types of concrete are readily available and more.
Recently, Start Somewhere began producing coloured TwistBlocks – also a request from the community. “They gave us the idea of making the coloured blocks. We took the idea and we are still employing it.” Milka explains. “Most of the customers, they love coloured blocks. So, we have made red, yellow [and] blue for them.”
Today, Start Somewhere’s TwistBlock production facility in Kibera is a hub of activity. Though the facility itself is small and densely packed, the team is extremely efficient. They measure and mix the materials, moulding and de-moulding the TwistBlocks, then curing and storing them in neat, colourful stacks ready for sale. And Milka is there, overseeing it all. Later this year, she hopes to enrol in a technical training course on masonry.
“I am not a man,” says Milka, “but I am strong. [And] I am thriving in the industry. The opportunity to transform Kibera and make a difference inspires me. I believe a new Kibera can be a reality.”
