Echale is a housing development enterprise that has built and sold more than 50K durable, desirable, and sustainable single family homes to low income people in Mexico for 25 years.
We are now transferring Echale’s know-how and ecoblock technology to developers in Africa to address the 50 million unit shortage that will continue to grow if left unchecked. We are starting in Uganda where the current housing supply shortage is 2.1 million units.
In Uganda we are targeting underserved lower middle-class workers earning USD 250-350 per month, who are stuck in a cycle of paying half their earnings on rent for a substandard and overcrowded apartment in Kampala; and who cannot afford the average USD 40K price of a house that meets their requirements. Echale offers an opportunity to own a durable and environmentally sustainable single family home that meets their requirements at USD 20K.
The design team for the Uganda house includes three architects: One from the Echale Mexico design team who has experience designing low income housing with ecoblocks (Echale’s low-carbon compressed earth blocks), Gretel Uribe; an award-winning American architect, Marc Thorpe, to provide a modern design aesthetic; and a Ugandan architect, Jjuuko Kalinge, to provide contextual inputs needed to ensure product/market fit in Uganda. The Uganda house was designed to meet the geographic, size, and aesthetic requirements of our target audience while keeping the build cost below USD 12K and carbon footprint minimal. The primary construction materials are ecoblocks and other locally sourced materials that minimize costs and carbon footprint.
The 65 s.m. houses will be built on plots of land that accommodate 20-100 houses and include shared spaces for community gardens and gathering. We believe in the power of good design to create safe, healthy, and beautiful communities that enable more people to build equity in an asset that breaks the cycle of generational poverty. We plan to break ground with this project in July 2023 and are seeking USD 350K to help us go faster so we can achieve our goal of 20K houses in sub-saharan Africa in ten years.
