Housing Boom Opens New Business Opportunities for East Africa’s Roof Coating Market

Eastern Africa’s roof coating market is likely to continue growing in 2025 as governments in the region increase spending on affordable housing projects and approve enforcement of green building regulations to accommodate the increasing population and mitigate the effects of climate change.

Roofing material manufacturers and coating solutions providers are optimistic about the business opportunities emerging from the new housing construction schemes as governments rush to address the housing deficit fueled by rapid urbanization and a lack of proper urban planning.

Moreover, the increase in per capita disposable income has triggered a spike in the demand for modern residential and commercial spaces.

Housing Crisis

Through a combination of public and private initiatives, East Africa countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda are addressing some of the challenges constraining the realization of adequate housing, such as lack of finance, exorbitant cost of urban land, weak tenure security, rising construction costs and increasing slums paving the way for the massive housing projects.

In Kenya, the government is in a race to construct at least 200,000 housing units annually to reduce the two million housing deficit. In Uganda, the government estimates a housing deficit of approximately 1.7 million housing units that is projected to reach three million by 2030 according to previous government reports. In neighboring Rwanda, an estimated 721,000 new homes are needed within the capital, Kigali, over the next seven years and the government is working with the private sector to achieve the affordable housing dream according to official estimates.

Although the housing crisis in East Africa has on one hand been a headache for governments in the region, on the other hand, it has provided business opportunities for innovative roofing solutions, a key driver of the growth of the region’s roof coating market.
Public and private house developers would be seeking to protect their structures against the effects of wind, water, and UV light even as concerns persist on the suitability of existing housing designs to address environmental risks.

For instance, BASF SE, in partnership with Nairobi-based design innovation firm Takazuri, are providing a roofing material they say is tailored to East Africa’s weather conditions, especially at this time when governments and private sector in the region are pushing for effective climate change mitigation solutions.

The roofing and cladding material has incorporated Takazuri’s Climatile technology, a patented roofing and cladding solution the company said “enhances climate resilience via improved insulation, solar energy and biophilic adaptation.” The material is manufactured using collected and post-consumer materials as the main feedstock.

“Our products are designed for high performance and multi-functionality while utilizing locally collected and converted waste from urban settings, and soon, from ocean plastics collected off the Kenyan coast,” Maria Schlesinger, Takazuri’s co-founder and CEO, said in a statement announcing the partnership with BASF in September 2024.

BASF, which is one of the chemical companies creating additive packages suitable for Eastern Africa’s harsh weather conditions, has been involved in the development of the Climatile technology, particularly in process optimization, thermal stabilization and enhancing the service life of the post-consumer recyclates, according to Schlesinger.

Gabriel Chemie, one of Europe’s leading masterbatch producers, is providing a customized combi-batch to Takazuri containing colors and stabilizers “to ease the dispersion and homogeneity in the polymer matrix during the conversion of the tile.”
Takazuri said the plastics are typically stabilized against thermal and photo-oxidation to meet the stability requirements for specific processing steps, product life cycles and specific applications.

“Most stabilizers are used up during the first product life cycle, resulting in changes in rheological and mechanical properties,” the company said.

Furthermore, Takazuri added, the additive stabilizers provided by BASF are crucial in the stabilization of virgin plastics as well as being essential ingredients to improve the quality of post-consumer recyclates to support sustainable applications such as Climatile.
To achieve the long-lasting service life of Climatile technology, Takazuri said “re-stabilization with suitable antioxidants and an appropriate light stabilizer was necessary for a leak-free roofing solution that is also affordable to would-be consumers.”

Bettina Sobotka, BASF’s head of global marketing and development, plastic additives, said the company designed a tailor-made additive system “to meet the challenges of using post-consumer recycled materials for long-term outdoor exposure.”

“We sincerely hope that the construction sector and local communities in East Africa can benefit from this collaboration, thereby fostering economic growth,” Sobotka added.

The roofing and cladding material has been launched in Eastern Africa, where governments in the region are fully aware of the impact of emissions from energy-consuming buildings especially on the livelihoods of the more than 60 million spread across the region’s cities and urban areas.

PwC, a British multinational professional services firm, said cities in East Africa “consume a majority of the region’s energy, producing more than 60% of greenhouse gas emissions driven by infrastructure construction and its use, such as buildings and transport, industries and manufacturing plants.”

“Additionally, cities in East Africa are particularly vulnerable because they are characterized by rapidly swelling informal settlements that lack basic infrastructure and services,” the firm said.

Competition is Growing

But even as Takazuri samples the response of the market to its Climatile technology, the company should brace itself for competition as more players are emerging to claim a share of East Africa’s eco-friendly and affordable roofing materials market.

For instance, in Kenya, Chinese firm Sinoma Roofing Systems Company Ltd, a subsidiary of China National Building Material Group Co. Ltd. (CNBM), has set up a new US$ 11.5 million factory in Nairobi to with an annual capacity of 2,000,000 square meters of stone coated tiles.

The company said it will deploy the “newest technology of automatic production line to make sure the production is high standard.”
CNBM, which was established through the merger of the China National Building Materials Group Corporation and China National Materials Group Corporation, has previously constructed roofing material manufacturing plants in Nigeria and Philippines as well as China, and is considered one of the biggest manufacturers of building materials in the world.

The Chinese firm said the roofing tiles to be manufactured in Nairobi will not only have a lifespan of at least 60 years but will withstand impact of strong winds and the materials used would be easily recycled, hence protecting the environment from pollution. This would mean using sustainable and quality coatings for the roofing material.

Wavinya Ndeti, the governor of Machakos County, one of the 47 counties in Kenya and one that shares a boundary with Nairobi, where the factory is located, was quoted saying CNBM’s technology “will change how roofing is done.”

For East Africa’s roof coating market, the New Year, building on the previous year, may after all be another season of growth both in terms of performance and improvement of its green credentials.