East Africa
article by Reid Harvey

I enrolled at The New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. Among the more important projects I undertook there was to build a scove kiln with the help of a small group of people who formed Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA). This scove kiln is built of the same bricks that it is firing. (Scoving is the mud on the outside of the kiln.)

Atop the Hoffman brick kiln at Khorobhagarat, Sudan. Egyptian technicians at left and center talk to their Sudanese counterparts. The kiln's heat helps the heavy fuel oil in the containers to become less viscous.

These simple kilns are built all over Africa with the biggest investment being time and labour. First, clay is dug and formed into bricks. These are dried and stacked en masse, a finger's width apart. A slow wood fire is started underneath and in due course (days later) the kiln is dismantled, the bricks ready to use. But our brick and kiln at Alfred differed from those in Africa in one important respect: We had mixed creek sand by foot into our red clay to make it refractory. We had taken a first journey into an uncharted region of appropriate technology with little prior information as to methodology. Our premise for the scove kiln project was that we were making simple refractory brick and that villagers almost anywhere in the developing world could do the same. Without much financial outlay, villagers could then build ware kilns with the bricks for the production of a variety of ceramic building materials, other refractories, table and sanitary ware. In a second phase, a foundry could make carpentry or farm tools, curtailing costly procurement of imported implements. For water and sanitation, they could make ceramic water filters, pipes and tiles for drainage or simple sanitary wares. For agriculture, kilns can be built to burn lime. Glazed food storage containers would help preserve food until it reaches the market. With all these various sectors in need of simple, inexpensive solutions on a village level, clear opportunities in appropriate, small business developments are wide open. So the journey leads to an inevitable conclusion: The only true guarantee of self-sustainability is, I believe, to be found in ceramics, the starting point of nearly all industry. Training and education in ceramics and in high temperature processes are the prerequisite to start. It is the manufacturers' products, like refractory bricks or carpenters' tools, that make so much industry possible. A consumer product, like a vegetable or an article of clothing, plays no further role in developing industry.

Sudan's number one export is cotton. It also grows sunflowers for producing oil. The stalks of both cotton and sunflowers usually go to waste. Bagasse is a byproduct of sugar cane, mixed with molasses. South of Khartoum, a carbonized bagasse is being manufactured. Another important attribute of the vertical tunnel kiln is that it is well suited to small scale production, requiring only three or four workers at any time to operate. Along with its obvious environmental advantages, this kiln complies with the need to start industry on the smallest scale. For the BRRI's kiln, a second educational phase would aim to improve the skills of traditional brick makers, training and encouraging them to build their own vertical tunnel kilns.

Left: Stalls for foot-mixing brick materials will soon be replaced by a mechanised mixer. This will help make possible the drier mix needed for uniform bricks and proper stacking, resulting in better bricks and reduced fuel consumption.

The people of developing countries are industrious and resourceful, using constructively what many from the richer countries would regard as waste: tyres turned into sandals, discarded coffee cans turned into lanterns, a scrap of paper turned into a bag.

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