Abstract—This work presents a low-cost and eco-friendly building material named Agrostone panel. Africa’s urban population is growing at an annual rate of 2.8% and 62% of its population will live in urban areas by 2050. As a consequence, many of the least urbanized and least developed African countries’ will face serious challenges in providing affordable housing to the urban dwellers. Since the cost of building materials accounts for the largest proportion of the overall construction cost, innovating low-cost building material is vital. Agrostone panel is used in housing projects in Ethiopia. It uses raw materials of agricultural/industrial wastes and/or natural minerals as a filler, magnesium-based chemicals as a binder and fiberglass as reinforcement. Agrostone panel reduces the cost of wall construction by 50% compared with the conventional building materials. The pros and cons of Agrostone panel as well as the use of other waste materials as a raw material to make the panel more sustainable, low-cost and better properties are discussed. Keywords—Agrostone Panel, Low-cost and sustainable Building Materials, Agro-waste for construction I. INTRODUCTION FRICA has absorbed relatively high rates of urban growth over the past five decades. Africa’s urban population grew from 33 million in 1950 to 373 million in 2007. It means that, in 1950, only 14.7% but by 2007, 38.7% of the Africa population was living in urban areas. According to the latest UN projections, the urban population is expected to grow from 373 million in 2007 to 1,234 million in 2050, at annual growth rate of 2.8%. These projections show that African society will became predominantly urban and by 2050, 62% of the region’s population will live in urban areas [1]. Therefore, many African countries will face serious challenges in providing affordable housing as rapid population growth is becoming largely an urban phenomenon concentrated in the developing world. Sub-Saharan Africa has long been one of the least urbanized and least developed regions of the world. Ethiopia is one of the Sub-Saharan Africa countries with 2.9% annual population growth. The capital city, Addis Ababa is among the least urbanized cities of the world and is one of the oldest and largest cities in Africa. Addis Ababa’s population has nearly doubled every decade [2]. This is pumped by both the high level of national population growth and high urban migration. This high growth has been putting a tremendous pressure on both social and physical infrastructures. W. Z. Taffese is with the Materials Research and Testing Center (MRTC), Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction and City Development (EiABC), P. O. Box 518, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (phone: +251- 112-767602; fax:+251-112-752355; e-mail: woubishet.taffese@eiabc.edu.et). The availability of large numbers of jobs, better access to health and education make the urban migration in Addis Ababa very high which accounts for about 40% of the growth [2]. In addition, its geographic location has made it a hub to hundreds of thousands of people coming from all corners of the Country. Therefore, city of Addis Ababa confronted with critical problem of accommodating the rapidly growing urban populations with adequate shelter and basic urban services. II. HOUSING PROJECTS IN ADDIS ABABA As most of African cities, Addis Ababa also has the world’s largest proportion of urban residents living in slums. About 80% of Addis Ababa housing units and neighborhoods in the city are considered to be slums. The majority of the slum houses which is about 70% are concentrated in the inner- city and owned by Kebele (the lowest administration level) [3]. These houses are known as Kebele houses and occupied by low-income citizens. Almost all slum houses are constructed by “Chicka” (mud and wood construction type). The majority of the houses in the current slums of Addis Ababa are dilapidated. The dilapidated existing houses coupled with scarcity of houses had provoked the housing problems of the city. The number of housing units available in the city in year 2002 was about 60% of the housing needed by the residential or a backlog of about 230,000 housing units [3]. In addition to the house backlogs, the demand of the dwellers for residential houses is increasing by 10,000 annually and that makes the situation more severe [4]. In response to these problems, Addis Ababa city government has been trying to improve the dilapidated inner- city slums as well as to reduce the house backlogs under the Grand Housing Program (GHP) to meet target 11 of the Millennium Development Goal 7, of Cities without Slums. It is commonly known as condominium housing. This programme was primarily introduced to address both the daunting housing backlog of 230,000 and to replace 50% of the total 136,330 dilapidated kebele houses. Thus, GHP targeted to construct 300,000 low-cost houses by constructing 50,000 housing units annually [3, 5]. Accordingly, a condominium regulation was issued in 2004 and in the same year the city administration has proposed and launched a pilot project of 700 housing units including a commercial centre. This pilot project was given to the former GTZ (German Technical Cooperation) as a contract and upon completion the Addis W. Z. Taffese Low-Cost Eco-Friendly Building Material: A Case Study in Ethiopia A World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Civil, Environmental, Structural, Construction and Architectural Engineering Vol:6, No:2, 2012 183 International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 6(2) 2012 scholar.waset.org/1999.3/7965 International Science Index, Civil and Environmental Engineering Vol:6, No:2, 2012 waset.org/Publication/7965