Roofing in Côte d'Ivoire

Côte d'Ivoire runs from a humid lagoon coast and rainforest in the south to savanna in the north. Traditional buildings used earth, timber and thatch; today the country is roofed almost entirely in metal sheet, and concrete is the standard building material in Abidjan and other cities. Its best-known historic roofs belong to the earthen Sudanese-style mosques of the north.

Climate and hazards

The south is hot and very humid, with two rainy seasons; the north has a single rainy season and harmattan dust. Floods and landslides killed 45 people in the country between May 2017 and June 2018. The heat of concrete-and-metal buildings drives heavy use of air conditioning; an estimate reported by the French outlet Reporterre puts about 55% of energy use in Côte d'Ivoire and neighbouring countries into cooling homes.

Roofing history

The Sudano-Sahelian building style that originated around Djenné spread south into what is now northern Côte d'Ivoire, mainly from the 15th century. Several hundred earthen mosques in this style existed at the start of the 20th century; about twenty survive, most built between the 17th and 19th centuries. The Great Mosque of Kong was destroyed by Samory Touré in 1897 and rebuilt by its community.

On the coast, Grand-Bassam was developed as a colonial town from the 1880s to the 1950s, with houses built around galleries, verandas and gardens designed for the tropical climate, alongside the vernacular houses of the N'zima fishing village.

Traditional and vernacular roofs

• Sudanese-style mosques: earth (cob and adobe) walls with projecting timber frameworks, buttresses topped with pottery or ostrich eggs, and truncated-pyramid minarets. The southern examples have lower, sturdier buttresses suited to a wetter climate.
• Thatch: grass and palm-leaf thatch on rural houses, now a small minority.
• Earth villages: Ivorian architects cite village earth houses as models of climate-suited building.

Roofing today

In the 2014 Afrobarometer survey of Côte d'Ivoire, interviewers recorded:

Main roof material	Share of respondents (2014)
Metal, tin or zinc	88.2%
Thatch or grass	5.8%
Tiles	2.0%
Concrete	1.5%

Afrobarometer surveys interview about 1,200 adults per country; these figures are unweighted counts in the survey sample. The 2016 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey classifies roofs in categories including thatch/palm leaf, grass, mat, wood, métal/tôle, tiles and cement.

Concrete, modelled on European building, is the dominant construction system, and the Ministry of Housing has stated that about 80% of construction materials used in the country are imported. Firms such as the Ivorian practice Koffi & Diabaté have promoted "bio-architecture" using local materials, earth walls and natural ventilation as an alternative.

Codes, standards and regulation

The eight Sudanese-style mosques were placed on the National Cultural Heritage List by Decree No. 2020-121 of 29 January 2020, and each has a local management committee supervised by the Office Ivoirien du Patrimoine Culturel (OIPC).

Notable roofs

• Sudanese style mosques in northern Côte d'Ivoire: eight mosques at Tengréla, Kouto, Sorobango, Samatiguila, Nambira, Kong (two mosques) and Kaouara, a World Heritage site.
• Historic Town of Grand-Bassam: colonial gallery and veranda houses and the N'zima village, a World Heritage site.

Local roofing terms

• tôle (French): metal roof sheet.
• dalle (French): concrete roof slab.

Sources and gaps

Survey shares are unweighted. Published sources on the many regional vernacular traditions (for example Senufo, Baoulé and Lobi houses), on regulation and on industry: published information is limited.