African project
Mashambas Skyscraper – sub-Saharan Africa
half of them have something in common: they’re small farmers.
Despite several attempts, the green revolution’s mix of fertilizers, irrigation,
and high-yield seeds – which more than doubled global grain production
between 1960 and 2000 – never blossomed in Africa, because of poor
infrastructure, limited markets, weak governments, and fratricidal civil wars
that wracked the post-colonial continent.
The main objective of the project is to bring this green revolution to the poorest
people. Giving training, fertilizer, and seeds to the small farmers can give
them an opportunity to produce as much produce per acre as huge modern
farms. When farmers improve their harvests, they pull themselves out of
poverty. They also start producing surplus food for their neighbours. When
farmers prosper, they eradicate poverty and hunger in their communities.
Mashambas is a movable educational centre, which emerges in the poorest
areas of the continent. It provides education, training on agricultural
techniques, cheap fertilizers, and modern tools; it also creates a local trading
area, which maximizes profits from harvest sales. Agriculture around the
building flourishes and the knowledge spreads towards the horizon. The
structure is growing as long as the number of participants is rising. When the
local community becomes self-sufficient it is transported to other places.
The structure is made with simple modular elements, it makes it easy to
construct, deconstruct and transport. Modules placed one on the other create
the high-rise, which is a form that takes the smallest as possible amount of
space from local farmers.
Today hunger and poverty may be only African matter, but the world’s
population will likely reach nine billion by 2050, scientists warn that this
would result in global food shortage. Africa’s fertile farmland could not only
feed its own growing population, it could also feed the whole world. AD
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africandesignmagazine.com