There are wide range of new technologies available for increasing the productivity and diversity of the Nigerian economy with the potency not only of meeting the ever growing domestic demand but also possibility of assisting sister African economies. The stock of knowledge and related innovations available to the Nigerian nation, believe me, are immensely voluminous and still growing. Technological diversity and convergence make it relatively easy and cheaper to access and apply knowledge to add value to Nigeria’s natural resources.
Basic Research and development (R&D) as well as ‘Reverse Engineering’ techniques have made available to the Nigerian society technologies and tools that can be applied to confront new frontiers to improve housing, infrastructure (roads, water supply), agriculture, energy and the environment. Unfortunately, the nation is yet to appreciate the benefits of self reliance and many associated principles and sacrifices necessary to harness long term benefits. The Nation’s quest for imported goods and services has continued to grow to insatiable levels, there have been insufficient safeguards to protect local production and encourage industries that will give rise to employment, generate wealth and alleviate poverty.?
However, for this nation to develop effectively, relevantly and at accelerated rate, tangible and intangible results of Research and Development (R&D) as well as recognising innovations that can transform the economy are imperative. Relevant technological innovations can be utilized to transform the population and the environment through novel innovative adaptations. Even the foreign goods and services can be adapted with value additions to conserve resources and help the indigenous entrepreneurs.
The socio-political institutions of the nation must appreciate the contributions of the nation’s scientists and technologists whose R&D activities should be harnessed, assessed and accepted, patronized and utilized for economic growth. This paper is a simple intuitive thought-out enlightenment article that discusses some of the tested R&D innovations of the Nigerian Building and Road Research Institute that can be applied for Village Renewal and the Cluster Project Schemes.
2. Differentiating Village Renewal/Cluster Schemes From Affordable Housing Concepts
In the queries and debates that have raged, I have noticed a total confusion, with respect to housing in which NBRRI has been in the forefront, between Village renewal/Cluster schemes to affordable housing concept. Classical approaches, which are theoretical, may present them as espoused in the following sections.
• Clustering can be considered the most important unsupervised learning problem; so, as that every other problem of this kind deals with finding a structure in a collection of unlabeled data. A loose definition of clustering could be “the process of organizing objects into groups whose members are similar in some way”. A cluster is therefore a collection of objects which are “similar” between them and are “dissimilar” to the objects belonging to other clusters. So, the goal of clustering is to determine the intrinsic grouping in a set of unlabeled data. But how to decide what constitutes a good clustering? It can be shown that there is no absolute “best” criterion which would be independent of the final aim of the clustering.
Consequently, it is the user which must supply this criterion, in such a way that the result of the clustering will suit their needs. For instance, we could be interested in finding representatives for homogeneous groups (data reduction), in finding “natural clusters” and describe their unknown properties (“natural” data types), in finding useful and suitable groupings (“useful” data classes) or in finding unusual data objects (outlier detection). It is particularly amenable to mathematical statistical theorems where clustering algorithms can be applied in many fields, such as Marketing, Libraries (book ordering), Insurance, City-Planning, Earthquake studies (intensity contours round epicentres) and the WWW (document class and weblog data).
• Affordable Housing is a term used to describe dwelling units whose total housing costs for either rented or purchased unit, are deemed affordable, i.e. within reach, to those that have a median household income. In Nigeria, we can define it as housing which is “reasonably adequate in standard and location for lower or middle income households and does not cost so much that a household is unlikely to be able to meet other basic needs on a sustainable basis. In the United Kingdom affordable housing includes social rented and intermediate housing, provided to specified eligible households whose needs are not met by the market. Most of the literature on affordable housing refers to a number of forms that exist along a continuum – from emergency shelters, to transitional housing, to non-market rental (also known as social or subsidized housing), to formal and informal rental, ending with affordable home ownership.
Housing choice is a response to an extremely complex set of economic, social, and psychological impulses. For example, some households may choose to spend more on housing because they feel they can afford to, while others may not have a choice. In the some countries, notably US and Canada, a commonly accepted guideline for housing affordability is housing cost that does not exceed 30% of a household’s gross income. When the monthly carrying costs of a home exceed 30–35% of household income, then the housing is considered unaffordable for that household. Determining housing affordability is complex and the commonly used housing-expenditure-to-income-ratio tool has been challenged. So countries have switched as time changed and typical contemporary ratios are: Canada (30%) and India (40%). This is a town planning concept which may have no bearing on individual relationships because they can easily be adaptable to very random situations, like disaster management, where sorting may not be possible, at least within the time frame available.
• Village Renewal is a concept that translates rural settlements, in particular, from a purely agricultural setting to an industrial society. Structural changes are introduced to agricultural concepts to reverse urban migration and introduce some processing concepts in association with clustering. The Village and rural settlements living conditions are taken into cognizance and associated terms include land reclamation and consolidation, rural exodus, rural cultural landscape, suburbanisation, endogenous potential, functional changes.? Depending on the location within the spatial settlement pattern, different functional types of rural settlements can evolve. On the one hand, there are rural settlements within densely populated regions and/or tourist areas that are characterised by urban life styles and modern economic systems.
On the other hand, villages in remote areas are frequently hit by rural exodus or stagnation. Federal, State and Local governments must develop concepts and programs for the preservation and renewal of rural settlements in the context of policies on agricultural development and restructuring, environmental planning and urban development policies, and economic and political strategies at regional (or even State) level. So it is a systematic OR methodical changing and strengthening of rural settlements and villages and therefore it must address objectives, plan measures and predict success. The concept of affordability is totally inconceivable in Cluster and Village renewal schemes.
The materials in a village or cluster project can be Mud or Bamboo or Grass but they must be specially prepared so that there is Value-addition resulting from R&D innovations while there is must be design concept to give it at least functionality. What you term a house may not have the bedroom separated from the sitting room and toilet facilities and bathrooms can as well be shared. Some facilities of existing structures may as well become elemental members of the renewed or regenerated homes. For example, the foundation of an existing home can be strengthened and reinforced to form a renewed house. However, ultimately there is improvement and basic comfort to the users.
Therefore in terms of costs, affordable homes are more expensive than Cluster and Village Renewal homes. Though the durability of both types can be the same, in fact the Village and Cluster homes can have longer life-span, nonetheless affordable homes take longer to conceive and construct.
Professor Danladi S. Matawal Director- General/Chief Executive Officer, NBRRI
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