Moladi bets on stokvel-style community model to build low-cost homes faster
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Moladi founder Hennie Botes wants South Africa's housing crisis to become an engine for local business, using reusable plastic formwork and a stokvel-inspired model that trains residents to build their own homes.
Hennie Botes, inventor and chief executive of South African construction company Moladi, wants the country's housing crisis to become a catalyst for small business growth, job creation and community empowerment. His company uses reusable plastic formwork to cast a home's wall structure, an alternative to conventional bricklaying that is designed to make affordable housing faster and cheaper to deliver.
Speaking on the Mzansi Business Podcast, Botes described a community-driven model that borrows from the spirit of a stokvel, bringing households and local entrepreneurs together around a shared goal rather than treating communities as passive recipients of housing. Because of the simplicity of the system, he said, houses can be cast by local, unskilled workers who are trained over about two weeks.
"The social side is really where my heart lies," Botes said. "For me it's very sad that when you go to any country in Africa, you have people standing at the robots selling cigarettes, lighters, chargers, ice cream and they do this every day. But what they make today is not enough so they will be back there tomorrow, so it's basically hand-to-mouth living."
Moladi was established in 1986 and built its first house in 1987. The company has supplied its technology to countries including Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Mexico and the United States, with projects ranging from affordable housing to schools and large-scale accommodation.
International adoption has not been matched at home. Botes said he has spent much of the past four decades trying to persuade the national Department of Human Settlements to embrace alternative building technologies, arguing that conventional construction methods alone cannot deliver the volume of housing South Africa needs at an affordable cost. He said he has written to Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana and the President, and has raised the issue at the Union Buildings and in Parliament, blaming a bureaucratic bottleneck for the slow uptake.
South Africa's housing backlog exceeds 2.6 million units, partly because of high land costs. Botes said he will keep lobbying for the technology domestically while continuing to scale up in export markets.