̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - construction

Building a more sustainable world

skbf2 — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 10:21:27 +0000

This longstanding partnership between Cambridge, Arup and the Ove Arup Foundation has made our world safer and more sustainable and changed the way professionals are taught.

Cement recycling method could help solve one of the world’s biggest climate challenges

sc604 — Wed, 22 May 2024 14:47:38 +0000

Researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have developed a method to produce very low-emission concrete at scale – an innovation that could be transformative for the transition to net zero.

House of moveable wooden walls promising cheaper, greener alternative to ‘knocking through’, wins award

ta385 — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 10:30:00 +0000

House-owners the world over consider ‘knocking through’ walls to achieve more open-plan living or changing layouts to accommodate new arrivals or circumstances. ̽��ֱ��results may be impressive, but they come at a sizeable financial and environmental cost. But what if it wasn’t necessary to demolish internal brick and/or plaster walls and build new ones?

In June 2023, researchers at Cambridge’s Centre for Natural Material Innovation unveiled 'Ephemeral', an innovative alternative using engineered wood, at the London Design Biennale. ̽��ֱ��team, including partners PLP Architecture, went on to win the Public Choice Award for EUREKA!, the Biennale's first showcase of design-led innovation from UK research centres.

̽��ֱ��project, led by Cambridge researcher Ana Gatóo, invites visitors to step into a home constructed around principles of affordability, sustainability, flexibility and adaptation. ̽��ֱ��flexible wooden partition walls – developed by Gatóo as part of her Cambridge PhD research – are made using kerfing, which allows wood to bend without breaking, the same technique employed in the construction of guitars and other stringed instruments.

̽��ֱ��resulting wooden walls are simple, resilient, foldable and movable, meaning they can respond to the changing needs of residents, for instance, as children are born or leave the nest; as age or mobility bring changing requirements; or as homeworking patterns change.

Watch a short film about the project

Gatóo says: “Self-assembly and modular furniture have improved so many people’s lives. We’ve developed something similar but for walls so people can take total control of their interior spaces.”

“If you have lots of money, you can hire a designer and alter the interiors of your house, but if you don't, you're stuck with very rigid systems that could be decades out-of-date. You might be stuck with more rooms than you need, or too few. We want to empower people to make their spaces their own.”

̽��ֱ��team’s ‘rooms of requirement’ provide elegant, affordable solutions which can be built into the fabric of the building from its first design, or seamlessly retrofitted – avoiding the mountains of carbon associated with demolition and reconstruction.

Gatóo says: “We’re using engineered timber, which is affordable and sustainable. It's a natural material which stores carbon, and when you don’t need it anymore, you can make something else with it. So you are creating minimal waste.”

Gatóo and her colleagues are based in the ̽��ֱ��’s Centre for Natural Material Innovation, a world leader in research into innovative and sustainable uses of timber in construction.

̽��ֱ��team emphasises that their system could be used anywhere in the world, in workplaces as well as in homes, and the researchers have already had encouraging conversations with industry, including with affordable housing developers in India.

Gatóo says: “I’ve worked in development and post-disaster housing with NGOs in many countries around the world, always using sustainable materials. When I started my PhD, I wanted to merge making housing more affordable and social with technical innovation and sustainability. This is what our cities of the future need – caring for people and the environment at the same time.”

Implemented at scale, this innovation could change the construction industry for the better, empowering people to adapt their spaces to their needs while slashing housing costs and overcoming some of the hurdles which the construction industry must tackle to be part of a sustainable future.

Working with Cambridge Enterprise, the research team is seeking industry and policy partners to further advance product feasibility for industry-wide adoption.

̽��ֱ��project is supported by PLP Architecture, ̽��ֱ��Laudes Foundation, the Future Observatory and the AHRC Design Accelerator.

Cambridge architects have won a public choice award at the London Design Biennale for a prototype home constructed with flexible wooden partition walls which can be shifted to meet the changing needs of residents. ̽��ֱ��invention aims to reduce waste and carbon while also improving living conditions for those who cannot afford expensive refurbishments.

This is what our cities of the future need – caring for people and the environment at the same time

Ana Gatóo

Ron Bakker

Ephemeral exhibit at the London Design Biennale 2023

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COP must reverse rising pessimism over building sector decarbonisation

ta385 — Thu, 17 Nov 2022 09:05:00 +0000

Negativity on Twitter about decarbonising the built environment has increased by around a third since 2014, according to a new analysis of more than 250,000 tweets featuring #emissions and #building between 2009 and 2021.

̽��ֱ��pessimistic trend has followed the launch of major climate action reports. ̽��ֱ��study, published in Nature Scientific Reports, reveals that expressions of ‘fear’ in Twitter dialogue increased by around 60% following the launch of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report on Climate Change in 2015.

̽��ֱ��researchers, from Cambridge, Boston, Sussex and Aarhus Universities and Caltech, also found that ‘sadness’ increased by around 30% following the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming 1.5˚C in November 2019; while debate in November 2020 over lobbying of builders and utility companies over non-compliance with new building codes in the US triggered a spike in ‘anger’.

Mapping tweets that caused spikes in emotional engagement revealed that public concerns triangulated around inaction towards emission reduction, the fairness of carbon tax, the politicisation of building codes (distinctively seen for the US) and concerns over environmental degradation. This demonstrates, the researchers argue, “a strong environmental justice discourse.”

̽��ֱ��findings appear on the heels of COP27’s building sector events (10th – 14th November), which sought to promote a just transition and enhancing building resilience with the tagline ‘Build4Tomorrow’.

Lead author Ramit Debnath, Cambridge Zero Fellow at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and a visiting faculty associate in Computational Social Science at Caltech, said:

“Major climate policy events including COP have emphasised how difficult it is to decarbonise the built environment and this has been reflected in the rise of negative feelings on social media.

“But our research also offers hope – we found that climate policy events can and do foster public engagement, mostly positive, and that this has the power to increase the building sector’s focus on environmental justice.

“To build for tomorrow fairly, global climate action has to incorporate and empower diverse public voices. Policy actions are no longer isolated events in this digital age and demand two-way communication. Policy events and social media have a crucial role to play in this.”

̽��ֱ��study highlights that the building sector is one of the most important and challenging to decarbonise. ̽��ֱ��IPCC suggests that restricting climate change to 1.5˚C requires rapid and extensive changes around energy use, building design, and broader planning of cities and infrastructure. ̽��ֱ��buildings and construction sector currently accounts for around 39% of global energy and process-related carbon emissions. ̽��ֱ��International Energy Agency estimates that to achieve a net-zero carbon building stock by 2050, direct building carbon emissions must decrease by 50%, and indirect building sector emissions must also decrease 60% by 2030.

But decarbonising the building sector is challenging because it involves a complex overlap of people, places and practices that creates a barrier to designing just emission reduction policies. ̽��ֱ��study argues that democratising the decarbonisation process “remains a critical challenge across the local, national and regional scales”.

“Our findings shed light on potential pathways for a people-centric transition to a greener building sector in a net-zero future,” Debnath said.

Using advanced natural language processing and network theory, the researchers found a strong relationship between Twitter activity concerning the building sector and major policy events on climate change. They identify heightened Twitter engagement around developments including: the Paris Agreement’s call for the building sector to reduce its emissions through energy efficiency and address its whole life cycle; COP-23’s ’Human Settlement Day’ which focused on cities, affordable housing and climate action; COP25’s discourse on green/climate finance for residential homes; and COP26’s ’Cities, Region and Built environment Day’.

̽��ֱ��researchers found that despite negative sentiments gaining an increasing share since 2014, positive sentiments have continued to multiply as Twitter engagement has exploded. Across the entire study period (2009–21), positive sentiments have fairly consistently maintained a larger share of the conversation than negative sentiments.

̽��ֱ��study highlights the fact that core topics covered by tweets have changed significantly over time, as new innovations, technologies and issues have emerged. Hashtags associated with COP26, for instance, included #woodforgood and #masstimber, as well as #housingcrisis, #healthybuildings #scaleupnow, and #climatejusticenow, all largely or entirely absent in Twitter conversations between 2009 and 2016.

̽��ֱ��researchers found that discourse on innovative emissions reduction strategies which remain uncommon in the building sector— including use of alternate building materials like cross-laminated timber; implementing climate-sensitive building codes; and the circular economy – inspired Tweets expressing ‘anticipation’.

“COP26 was an extraordinary moment," Debnath said. " ̽��ֱ��Twitter engagement surrounding the event connected public health, the circular economy, affordable housing, and decarbonisation of the built environment like never before.”

“We are seeing a paradigm shift in the building emission discourse towards broader social and environmental justice contexts. Reference to low-carbon alternatives to concrete, housing crisis, scaling-up and climate justice are all part of the growing social justice movement associated with healthy and affordable social housing narratives globally.”

̽��ֱ��study notes that considering the size of Twitter’s current user base (around 211 million users globally), the number of tweets about emissions in the building sector, remains relatively small.

“It’s crucial that policymakers raise the salience of these issues and develop communications strategies to emphasise the importance of climate action in hard-to-decarbonise sectors like the building sector,” Debnath said.

̽��ֱ��authors of the study intend to continue to analyse social media interaction with further climate policy events, beginning with COP27.

Co-author Professor Benjamin Sovacool, Director of Institute for Global Sustainability at Boston ̽��ֱ�� said: “Some people dismiss Twitter as a poor focus of academic research, given its ability to spread misinformation and fake news. But we instead see it as a lens into the inner workings of how millions of people think, and rethink, about energy and climate change. It offers an incredible opportunity to reveal people’s true intentions, their revealed preferences, in unbiased form on a public forum.”

Co-author Prof R Michael Alvarez, Professor of Political and Computational Social Science at Caltech, said: “This is an innovative and important study, showing how an interdisciplinary and international group of scholars can use big data and machine learning to provide policy guidance on how to decarbonize the build sector. Research like this is critical at this time, to inform the debates at forums like COP27 and to energise additional scholarly work that can help further our goal of democratising climate action.”

Reference

R Debnath, R Bardhan, DU Shah, K Mohaddes, MH Ramage, MR Alvarez, and B Sovacool, ‘Social media enables people-centric climate action in the hard-to-decarbonise building sector’. Nature Scientific Reports (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41589-022-23624-9

Social media engagement with climate policy events is vital to reducing building emissions and ensuring environmental justice, research led by Cambridge suggests

To build for tomorrow fairly, global climate action has to incorporate and empower diverse public voices

Ramit Debnath

Brian (Ziggy) Liloi. CC licence via Flickr

People installing a living roof in 2012

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Cambridge spin-out using data analytics to extend the life of our built environment

skbf2 — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 15:15:35 +0000

In many countries, ageing infrastructure - such as roads, bridges and tunnels - remains in use beyond its design life and intended capacity.

In order to get more out of these assets using minimal resources, the construction industry needs to better understand how they are performing. Assessing their condition can be difficult, however. There are logistical challenges—visually inspecting remote and hard to access assets can be expensive and hazardous. Even in new construction, it is important to ensure safe environments and understand the short- and long-term environmental impact of a site.

Recently COVID-19 has compounded these challenges by limiting the number of people allowed onsite. In the longer term, the industry is facing pressures associated with the climate crisis and extreme weather events, which add strain to the condition and structural health of assets, making assessing their condition increasingly important.

The BKwai software platform brings together data from multiple sources—onsite sensors, environmental data, and remote satellite data—providing a comprehensive view of an asset as well as its surrounding environment. Bkwai applies advanced data techniques to help engineers sift through huge volumes of data to find patterns, identify early warning signs, and predict what could happen. ̽��ֱ��platform puts this insight into the site engineer’s hands quickly and in real time, helping construction companies and asset owners to make more timely, cost-effective, and safe decisions.

BKwai’s founder, Sakthy Selvakumaran, said: " ̽��ֱ��proliferation of new sensors and satellite technology has the potential to fuel a revolution in monitoring the built environment. Data can be used to make smarter, safer, more economical decisions - from planning to construction, and operation to maintenance. In an industry rooted in spreadsheets and manual interventions, however, it is difficult to find key insights and values. ̽��ֱ��industry is crying out for better tools to help us understand the complex challenges facing our built environment. That's where we step in. We can provide data-driven engineering insights, to find the right solutions and take action."

Selvakumaran has over a decade of international experience in design, construction, and maintenance of infrastructure assets. She combines this with a PhD and academic research in satellite monitoring and data analysis methods in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Department of Engineering.

Although only founded in 2019, BKwai is already used by some of the biggest names in UK construction and on existing major infrastructure assets. Current customers include Thames Tideway, Laing O’Rourke, Kier, WSP, and Highways England. ̽��ֱ��company is also supported by Geovation, part of Ordnance Survey, UK.

BKwai, a construction data company that helps engineers develop smarter, more sustainable infrastructure, has raised £2.2 million in seed funding from investors led by Octopus Ventures with participation from Cambridge Enterprise and Deeptech Labs.

Photo by Wes Hicks on Unsplash

Viaduct

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Cambridge in the 2019 New Year honours list

plc32 — Fri, 28 Dec 2018 22:31:00 +0000

Professor David Klenerman, FRS was knighted for Services to Science and for the Development of High Speed DNA Sequencing Technology.

Professor Klenerman said: “I feel very humbled to be recognised in this way.”

Sir David is a professor of biophysical chemistry at the Department of Chemistry at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and a Fellow of Christ's College. He is best known for his contribution in the field of next-generation sequencing of DNA, which subsequently resulted in Solexa, a high-speed DNA sequencing company that he co-founded.

“I also want to acknowledge and sincerely thank the highly talented people who have worked with me over the years and without whom my research would simply not have been possible. In particular the development of Solexa sequencing was the result of a massive team effort.”

Klenerman was educated at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge where he was an undergraduate student of Christ's College and received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1982. He earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree in chemistry in 1986 as a postgraduate student of Churchill College.

Sir David has received a string of honours for his work, including a 2018 Royal Medal from the Royal Society for his outstanding contribution to applied sciences. He was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2015 and Fellow of the Royal Society in 2012.

Professor Madeleine Julia Atkins, who was first honoured as a CBE in 2011, has been promoted DBE for her Services to Higher Education.

Dame Madeleine, lately Chief Executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England, has had a long and distinguished career in higher education, most recently providing outstanding leadership in ensuring a smooth transition between HEFCE and the new Office for Students and Research England. She has also been a Trustee and Board member for Nesta, and was until recently a Deputy Lieutenant in the West Midlands. She has been a Pro-Vice-Chancellor at Newcastle ̽��ֱ��, is a former Vice-Chancellor of Coventry ̽��ֱ��, and is now President of Lucy Cavendish College here at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��. She studied for a degree in law and history at Girton College and has a PhD from the ̽��ֱ�� of Nottingham.

Dame Madeleine said: “I am honoured to receive this award, which recognises the contribution of my former colleagues at HEFCE who worked so hard to make the transition to OfS and Research England both smooth and successful. I am delighted now to be bringing some of my experience in the higher education sector to support the students and Fellowship of Lucy Cavendish College”.

Professor John Frederick William Birney, FRS, the joint director, European Bioinformatics Institute was awarded a CBE For Services to Computational Genomics and to Leadership across the Life Sciences.

Professor Birney is Director of EMBL-EBI, Europe's flagship laboratory for the life sciences, and runs a small research group. He played a vital role in annotating the genome sequences of human, mouse, chicken and several other organisms. He led the analysis group for the ENCODE project, which is defining functional elements in the human genome. Birney’s main areas of research include functional genomics, assembly algorithms, statistical methods to analyse genomic information (in particular information associated with individual differences) and compression of sequence information.

Professor Birney, known as Ewan to his friends, family and colleagues, was educated at Eton, Oxford and St John’s College, Cambridge.

Dr Jennifer Mary Schooling, Director of the Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC), ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge was awarded an OBE For Services to Engineering and to Digital Construction.

Dr Schooling is a Fellow of Darwin College and has been the Director of CSIC since April 2013. CSIC focuses on how better data and information from a wide range of sensing systems can be used to improve our understanding of our infrastructure, leading to better design, construction and management practices. CSIC has strong collaborations with industry, developing and demonstrating innovations on real construction and infrastructure projects, and developing standards and guidance to enable implementation. Dr Schooling is also Chair of the Research Strategy Steering Group for the newly formed Centre for Digital Built Britain. Dr Schooling is founding Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Smart Infrastructure and Construction Proceedings journal (ICE). She recently served as a member of PAS185 smart cities security standard steering group and of ICE’s State of the Nation 2017 ‘Digital Transformation’ Steering Group. Prior to joining CSIC, Dr Schooling worked for Arup, leading the firm’s Research Business, and before that for Edwards Vacuum (then BOC Edwards) as a manager for New Product Introductions. She has a PhD from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Andrew Nairne, Director of Kettle’s Yard, was awarded an OBE for Services to Museums and the Arts. Kettle’s Yard is the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s modern and contemporary art gallery.

Andrew Nairne said: “I am delighted to receive this recognition following the hugely successful reopening of Kettle’s Yard in 2018: a magnificent team effort.”

“As Director of one of the eight ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Museums, I believe museums have a vital role to play in the life of both the ̽��ֱ�� and the community.”

̽��ֱ��Honours list, which dates back to around 1890, recognises notable services and contributions to Britain.

Members of collegiate Cambridge recognised for outstanding contributions to society in science, education, engineering and art

“I feel very humbled to be recognised in this way.”

Professor Sir David Klenerman

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£5.4 million centre will help transform the UK’s construction sector for the digital age

sc604 — Thu, 30 Nov 2017 13:19:13 +0000

̽��ֱ��Centre is a partnership between the Department of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy and the ̽��ֱ�� to support the transformation of the construction sector using digital technologies to better plan, build, maintain and use infrastructure. It will focus on the ongoing transformation of the built environment through the digital tools, standards and processes that are collectively known as Building Information Modelling (BIM). BIM enables the people building and managing our transport networks, cities and major infrastructure projects to take advantage of advances in the digital world to intelligently deliver better services and end products for UK citizens.

Led by Professor Andy Neely, Pro-Vice-Chancellor: Enterprise and Business Relations, the Centre builds on the expertise and experience of faculty from the Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC), Cambridge Big Data, the Distributed Information and Automation Lab (DIAL), the Cambridge Service Alliance (CSA) and the Institute for Manufacturing. ̽��ֱ��Cambridge researchers work with a team of specialists from Digital Built Britain Programme and partners from industry and academia to develop and demonstrate policy and practical insights that will enable the exploitation of new and emerging technologies, data and analytics to enhance the natural and built environment, thereby driving up commercial competitiveness and productivity, as well as citizen quality of life and well-being.

" ̽��ֱ��Centre for Digital Built Britain will work in partnership with Government and industry to improve the performance, productivity and safety of construction through the better use of digital technologies," said Professor Neely.

“ ̽��ֱ��achievement of the BIM Task Group in delivering the Level 2 BIM programme has provided both the UK and increasingly a worldwide platform for the digitisation of the construction and services sectors. We welcome the vast experience and capability Cambridge brings to the team and the creation of the Centre for Digital Built Britain,” said Dr Mark Bew MBE, Strategic Advisor to the Centre for Digital Built Britain.

“ ̽��ֱ��construction and infrastructure sector are poised for a digital revolution, and Britain is well placed to lead it. Over the next decade advances in BIM will combine with the Internet of Things (IoT), data analytics, data-driven manufacturing and the digital economy to enable us to plan new buildings and infrastructure more effectively, build them at lower cost, operate and maintain them more efficiently, and deliver better outcomes to the people who use them,” said Dr Jennifer Schooling, Director of the Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction. “This is a wonderful opportunity to put the breadth of research and industry engagement expertise from Cambridge at the heart of Digital Built Britain.”

̽��ֱ��UK is leading the world with its support of BIM implementation in the construction sector through its commitment to the Digital Built Britain Programme. By embedding Level 2 BIM in the government projects such as Crossrail, the programme has contributed significantly to Government’s £3 billion of efficiency savings between 2011 and 2015. Since 2016, all UK centrally funded projects require Level 2 BIM, which has achieved considerable cost savings for its construction procurement to date. Tasked with supporting innovation in the construction sector, the Construction Leadership Council has also put BIM at the heart of its sector strategy Construction 2025; which commits to cut built asset costs by 33 percent, and time and carbon by 50 percent. ̽��ֱ��Centre will continue and build on this transformative approach.

̽��ֱ��Centre for Digital Built Britain will be based in the Maxwell Centre in West Cambridge and will be formally launched in Spring 2018.

̽��ֱ��Government have announced £5.4 million in funding to launch the Centre for Digital Built Britain at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, which will help people make better use of cities by championing the digital revolution in the built environment. ̽��ֱ��Centre is part of a landmark government-led investment in growing the UK’s construction sector.

This is a wonderful opportunity to put the breadth of research and industry engagement expertise from Cambridge at the heart of Digital Built Britain.

Jennifer Schooling

raph.ae/

London Skyline

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Opinion: Why Ethiopia is on track to become Africa’s industrial powerhouse

Anonymous — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 09:01:23 +0000

Ethiopia seems to be attracting the attention of economists interested in Africa, and for good reason. Except for Rwanda, Ethiopia is the only African country whose economic growth has been consistently high for more than a decade without relying on a natural resource boom.

Between 2004 and 2014, per capita growth in Ethiopia was 8% per year. This was the highest on the continent during this period, and is impressive by any standard.

̽��ֱ��growth has been attributed mainly to a construction boom and increased agricultural productivity. But manufacturing has also been vital. It has grown at 11% per year and manufacturing exports increased more than elevenfold. This was largely thanks to the increasing export earnings of the footwear and apparel industries. ̽��ֱ��growth represents more than a doubling of manufactured exports’ share in total merchandise exports, which itself more than quintupled during the period.

Nevertheless, manufacturing as a share of gross domestic product in Ethiopia remains 5%, well below the African average of 10%. ̽��ֱ��country also scores below the African average on diversification, export competitiveness, productivity and technological upgrading.

Despite this, it’s not a long-shot to predict that Ethiopia will catch up with countries like China and Vietnam in some low-tech manufacturing industries in the near future. These are industries for which labour costs are very important. And right now you’d be hard pressed to find a country in the world that has cheaper labour than Ethiopia. Even beyond these obvious industries, there are reasons to believe that Ethiopia might be on the right track to catch up with more advanced economies.

̽��ֱ��developmental state

First is the country’s developmental orientation. In many ways it resembles that of successful catch-up experiences in East Asia, such as Korea and Taiwan, with a relatively “authoritarian corporatist” structure and centralised economic planning.

Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia’s recently deceased prime minister who ruled from 1995 to 2012 and whose legacy remains strong in today’s ruling political coalition, repeatedly expressed admiration for the East Asian experience. He stressed that its success was based on a prudent combination of market forces and state intervention. ̽��ֱ��state not only provided basic infrastructure and services but also a conducive environment for the private sector.

̽��ֱ��second reason to be optimistic about Ethiopia’s prospects is the impressive industrial policymaking capability it has accumulated since the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front government came to power in 1991.

̽��ֱ��quality of this capability becomes clear if you read the Growth and Transformation Plan covering 2010-2015. According to economist Kenichi Ohno the plan is unusual in its brevity, coherence and strategic direction. Priority manufacturing industries were designated based on resource availability, labour intensity, linkages to agriculture, export potential and relatively low technological entry barriers. They include apparel and textiles, agro-processing, meat processing, leather and leather products, and construction.

Supporting institutes have been set up for each industry to coordinate the value chains effectively, for example by ensuring efficient supply of inputs to manufacturers and to assist firms with technological upgrading.

Two state-owned banks, the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia and the Development Bank of Ethiopia, provide most credit to firms in these industries. Foreign banks are simply not allowed to operate in Ethiopia. ̽��ֱ��understanding is that they will be allowed in only when domestic banks have developed the capacity to compete.

Education and infrastructure

While the Ethiopian government is formulating policies to support specific industrial sectors, for most of the past 20 years the federal budget has been devoted to policies that are more “horizontal” in nature, like education and infrastructure. Results so far are impressive.

Enrolment in primary schools has increased from below 20% in the early 1990s to about 94% in 2012. ̽��ֱ��number of universities has increased from one in 1990 to more than 30.

And the government has invested massively in infrastructure development, focusing on transport and power generation. ̽��ֱ��road network expanded from 26,550km to 53,997km between 1997 and 2011. ̽��ֱ��country is set to quadruple its power generation capacity when the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Nile is finished in 2017/18. One of the largest hydroelectric power stations in the world, the dam will generate 6,000MW.

Cement and floriculture

Feeding on the boom in construction, cement production has grown dramatically since 1999. ̽��ֱ��average annual growth of cement production has been more than twice the world average. As a result, Ethiopia is now the third largest cement producer in Africa.

State support has been both direct and indirect. Direct measures include entry incentives for domestic firms, like long-term loans for capital investments, easy access to mining resources and the allocation of foreign currency on a preferential basis.

Additionally, government provision of transport and energy has been crucial.

Like the cement industry, the Ethiopian floriculture sector has made important contributions to overall economic development.

Cut flower exports increased from three tons in 2003/04 to more than 50,000 tons in 2011/12, substantially raising export earnings. From 2007 to 2012, the sector’s employment doubled from 25,000 to 50,484. ̽��ֱ��industry grew from a single firm in 2000 to about 100 in 2014.

̽��ֱ��industry has also created indirect jobs through the expansion of horticulture. Related activities, such as packaging production, cold chain logistics and air transport have all benefited.

While Ethiopian firms initially kicked off the floriculture industry, foreign firms have increased their investment. In 2012 they accounted for 63% of all firms operating in the sector.

This foreign investment has contributed to technological development and improved market access.

Foreign investors say Ethiopia has become an attractive investment location because of natural endowments such as land and altitude, cheap labour and government incentives. These incentives include tax holidays on profits for up to five years, duty free privileges on all capital goods and the provision of construction material.

Subsidised loans have been the prime source of long-term investment financing for firms in the floriculture industry. Almost two-thirds of firms in the industry have relied on loans from the Development Bank of Ethiopia. And private banks, seeing the success of these loans, have also started lending to the industry.

Sectors destined for future success

Both the leather products and the textile and apparel sectors have been designated as top priority manufacturing industries in the recently released five-year development plan (2015 to 2020). One reason for this is because they have strong linkages with the agricultural sector as they use inputs from the livestock and cotton sectors. They are also both labour intensive, thus absorbing labour from the agricultural sector, and have major export potential and low entry barriers.

To become internationally competitive, the Ethiopian government has invited foreign investors to provide much-needed investment capital and technological capabilities. A slew of incentives has been created to induce these firms – as well as domestic ones that can meet international standards – to export. These include:

subsidised land rent in industrial zones;
generous credit schemes;
100% exemption from the payment of duties on imported capital goods and raw materials for the production of exports; and
five-year tax holidays on profits.

Export figures from the past two years indicate positive trends for both industries. But the results are not yet near where they need to be to make a significant contribution to structural change.

However, considering all the positive signs, Ethiopia might very well be on its way to become Africa’s industrial powerhouse.

This article is an edited extract from Transformative Industrial Policy for Africa, a report produced by Ha-Joon Chang, Jostein Løhr Hauge and Muhammad Irfan on behalf of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.

Jostein Hauge, PhD candidate, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Muhammad Irfan, PhD student, A Political Economy of Subsidies and Countervailing Measure in International Trade and Development - Issues of Policy Space and the WTO's SCM Agreement, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Jostein Hauge and Muhammad Irfan (Centre of Development Studies) discuss Ethiopia's economics growth over the last decade.

DFID - UK Department for International Development

Cementing Ethiopia's progress

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