Kenya Has a Low-Carbon Buildings Roadmap. The Next Test Is Delivery.
Kenya’s new decarbonisation roadmap sets out how buildings should change by 2040. Turning that ambition into reality will require changes not only in rules and finance, but in the everyday decisions made by the people who design, approve, supply and construct Kenya’s buildings.
The decisions behind a building can be difficult to see, but people live with the consequences of these decisions for decades. They show up in the temperature of a classroom, the size of an electricity bill, the cost of maintaining a home, or how well a building copes with heavy rainfall.
Those decisions carry particular weight in Kenya as the country builds more infrastructure for a growing and increasingly urban population. Buildings constructed today will remain in use for decades, locking in choices about energy, materials, cost and comfort.
In response, Kenya has developed the Kenya National Buildings & Construction Decarbonization Roadmap, a national framework for reducing emissions from the buildings and construction sector while making buildings more resilient to a changing climate. Developed through a process that brought together government, industry, built-environment professionals and other organisations working across the sector, the roadmap looks towards 2040 and identifies the changes needed across building design, energy use, construction materials, finance and skills.
The roadmap sets a path towards zero-emission, climate-resilient buildings by 2040 and gives the sector a shared direction. The challenge now is turning that direction into different decisions about what Kenya designs, finances, approves and builds.
How Kenya got here
To understand what needs to happen next, it helps to go back to how the roadmap was created — and the problems it was designed to solve.
Mumbua Musymi, Architect, Construction Project Manager and Green Building Expert at the Global Buildings Performance Network, led its development. She explains that the roadmap was developed over two years, during which government agencies, professional bodies, businesses, researchers, financiers and civil society organisations contributed through consultations and working sessions.
“We wanted this report to reflect reality — not just policy on paper, but what’s actually happening in cities, towns and villages,” Musymi said.
The roadmap was intended to bridge a gap between Kenya’s national climate commitments and the decisions currently being made across the buildings and construction sector.
Kennedy Matheka, Deputy Director for Buildings Safety at the State Department for Public Works, Ministry of Roads and Public Works, describes that shift as one from ambition to clearer responsibility.
“The roadmap changes the conversation from aspiration to accountability,” Matheka said. “Before it existed, there were commitments, but no single, integrated strategy that told the buildings and construction sector exactly what needed to happen, by when, and who was responsible.”
The roadmap sits within Kenya’s wider climate and building system. It takes the country’s broader climate commitments and translates them into a pathway for reducing emissions from buildings and construction. Other tools help put that pathway into practice: building codes set the rules that projects must follow, while green building standards provide more detailed measures for how buildings can improve their performance.
The roadmap remains the overarching guide. Codes, standards and practical guidance help translate its ambition into decisions that architects, engineers, developers and public officials can apply to individual projects.
For example, the Ministry of Land, Public Works, Housing, and Urban Development is now working on the National Green Building and Sustainability Framework (often referred to as the green building standard) to help action the roadmap.
Geofrey Mwangi, Civil Engineer at Arup, described the green building standard as one of the tools connecting the roadmap’s ambition with what happens on the ground.
“The green building standard becomes the link between the building code and the decarbonisation roadmap,” Mwangi said. “The decarbonisation roadmap gives the vision of what we would want to achieve by 2040, but it does not tell you how.”
Putting that vision into practice is the next test. It will depend on whether the many people who shape Kenya’s buildings can turn the roadmap’s direction into everyday decisions about how buildings are designed, approved and constructed.
From roadmap to building site
Before anyone moves in, a building passes through many hands. Architects, engineers, quantity surveyors, planners, county officials, developers, contractors, suppliers and fundis all make decisions that can affect how it ultimately performs.
George Arabbu, President of the Architectural Association of Kenya, said delivering lower-carbon buildings therefore cannot sit with one profession.
“We cannot have one arm of the built environment going green and the others not going,” Arabbu said.
An architect may orient a building to reduce heat gain, but engineers shape its energy and water systems. Quantity surveyors influence which materials stay in the budget. Contractors and artisans ultimately have to turn those specifications into a physical building.
Getting the roadmap right means bringing everyone in the building sector along — from architects and engineers to contractors, suppliers and artisans — so greener building practices can carry through from design to the finished building.
New construction methods and materials add another layer of complexity, explains Arabbu. A standard may specify a new product or technique, but the person using it needs to know how — and why – to use that product or technique. If contractors and artisans are not brought into the transition through training and practical guidance, familiar methods may remain the default.
Mwangi and his colleagues at Arup argue that developers and designers need reliable local evidence if they are going to compare one material with another.
Timber provides a good example.
“You cannot just plug and play what they are doing in South Africa and say it is going to work in East Africa,” Mwangi said.
Species, grading, moisture and heat can affect timber’s performance. Structural strength, fire, sound insulation, waterproofing and durability also need to be understood in local conditions. A roadmap can set a direction, but it only changes buildings when designers can specify new approaches, suppliers can provide them, the people on site know how and why to build with them.
What could get in the way
To be sure, the roadmap isn’t a silver bullet. Along the journey from national roadmap to finished building are several points where progress could stall.
Skills are one. Professionals, contractors, artisans, and county officials will need the knowledge to apply new standards, materials and construction methods. Training professionals at the design stage will have limited impact if the people responsible for construction are not brought along too.
Capacity within counties is another. Counties control much of the planning, approval and enforcement that happens on the ground. Without trained officers, testing facilities and clear guidance, national ambitions may struggle to change local construction.
Then there is finance.
Developers face pressure to keep upfront costs low, while banks may hesitate to finance unfamiliar materials or systems without recognised testing and evidence from completed projects.
“Kenya’s green building finance ecosystem remains fragmented,” Musymi explains. A developer may have a promising project but struggle to find a lender that understands its materials, future energy savings, or long-term value.
Nasra Nanda, Chair of the Africa Regional Network and Chief Executive Officer of the Kenya Green Building Society, believes coordination will be critical to overcoming all these barriers simultaneously.
“If we manage to get the coordination right — standards, policy, finance and projects — then you can scale,” she said.
Arabbu has called for an open platform through which policymakers, businesses, researchers and the public could track building performance and see where progress on the roadmap has stalled.
If Kenya gets it right
If Kenya gets this right, the benefits for local residents could be immediate and transformative: in particular, more homes that are affordable to operate and that work better.
Truly affordable housing, argues Nanda, is housing that doesn’t just cost less to purchase. A home with a lower selling price can still leave its occupants with high electricity bills, frequent repairs or unsafe indoor temperatures. Location also matters: transport, schools, jobs and essential services all contribute to the real cost of living somewhere.
Likewise, “greener” homes shouldn’t just be defined by the materials that were used or the energy systems installed. For Nanda, sustainability starts with how a home works for the people living in it — whether it is safe, comfortable, affordable to maintain, and suited to the needs of the occupants.
Her philosophy has implications beyond individual buildings. For example, informal settlements and underserved neighbourhoods often face greater exposure to heat, flooding and unsafe structures. Better buildings could reduce some of those risks while lowering the costs households carry over time.
Changing the materials Kenya builds with could create another set of benefits – to local businesses and their workforce.
The shift towards lower-carbon materials could create opportunities beyond individual construction projects. Responsibly produced biobased materials could connect demand from the construction sector with growers, processors, manufacturers and communities. But where those materials come from matters.
Growing timber demand will only support regenerative forest economies if it goes hand in hand with responsible forest management, traceable supply chains and opportunities for communities to participate and benefit.
The transition will also need to include existing industries. Mwangi noted that Kenya cannot move away from established materials such as cement and steel overnight. These industries support businesses, jobs and communities, so reducing their emissions will require time, investment and technical support.
The roadmap gives Kenya a shared direction, but its success will depend on what happens beyond the document — in county approvals, project budgets, material choices, training and construction sites.
If those pieces move together, the outcome could be felt far beyond national emissions targets: in homes that cost less to run, schools that are safer and more comfortable, buildings that use lower-carbon materials, and local industries that are better prepared for a low-carbon future.
Officials will measure whether the roadmap targets are being met. But the real measure of progress will be whether the next generation of buildings works better for the people who use them.
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