There’s more to why we use concrete slabs to define our success

The legacy of Afrikaners in Kenya. Photo of a school taken around 1959 named after pioneer South African settler. It is now Ndururumo High School. [Photo courtesy of Renaldo Retief]

Cement is a key input in modern construction and has a long history. Ancient Egyptians and Romans used rudimentary ‘cement’ to bind stones. The modern cement started with Joseph Aspdin taking out a patent in 1824 for “Portland Cement.” Concrete seems a good proxy measure of a country’s economic growth. The graph (on the right) for Kenya would apply to many other countries. Kenya’s GDP is in billions of USD and cement in 1000s of metric tonnes.

Kenya consumed about 5,708,800 metric tonnes of cement in 2015, a drop in the ocean compared with countries like China. Bill Gates noted on June 25, 2014 that China has used more cement in three years (2011-13) than USA in 100 years (1901-2000). USA consumed 4.5 gigatons while China used 6.6 gigatons for the given periods. Remember Gigabytes?