Unlocking the Timber Transition

What three Action Groups are Teaching Us About Scaling Timber in Construction in East Africa

When the Biobased Construction East Africa Coalition launched its first three action groups in Kenya, the goal wasn’t to produce quick wins. It was to test, and learn from, different pathways to building a regenerative forest economy within a complex forest-to-frame ecosystem.

Together, Coalition members are working from the premise that the best way to build a forest economy that works for people and nature is to pilot ideas, learn from what works, scale up those insights, and pilot again. As the writer E.L. Doctorow said of writing a novel: “It’s like driving a car at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” 

Over the past six months, three action groups in Kenya have been digging into some of the biggest timber economy ecosystem challenges from different angles. Almost halfway through this cycle, the stories coming out of KEFRI, Ardhi na Mbao, Arup, and The GoDown Arts Centre are already shifting how we think about forests, policy, and culture.

Below, we’ve detailed some early insights about what’s working, what’s challenging, and what we’re starting to understand about the way forward.  

Action Group 1: Testing reveals both promise and challenges for local timber

The team from KEFRI and Ardhi na Mbao has been working with two species—Melia volkensii, a drought-tolerant, termite-resistant hardwood native to Kenya’s drylands, and an exotic pine species from Uganda. Their goal has been to understand how well these locally available species perform in structural applications, and what it would take to make them viable at scale. Their early findings are telling.

Melia volkensii shows promise—but we need to build the capacity of those growing it. 

On the upside, from the small sample tested, Melia volkensii’s bending strength shows promise that the species could perform slightly better than cypress, Kenya’s most common plantation timber, if growing conditions improve. Its deep brown color also makes it visually appealing for visible finishes and furniture. 

But the trees collected from smallholder farms were often too irregular, too damaged, or too small for use in construction. During selection of Melia volkensii trees from  farms, KEFRI noted a  number of reasons for the quality challenges: improper pruning leading to boles with knots, trees spaced too close (which hinders diameter growth), and intercropping with the wrong crops.

KEFRI also reported that during the processing of Melia volkensii logs, nails hammered into the trees while still young became  embedded into the logs, negatively affecting  the timber quality and making the sawing process difficult. Tree farmers themselves pointed to other challenges: drought, limited access to quality seedlings, lack of knowledge on management of Melia volkensii plantations and difficulty finding buyers for the timber. To scale up cultivation of Melia volkensii in Kenya, we need to invest in training on propagation and tree management, along with providing stronger support for local tree growers’ associations. 

As a smaller tree, Melia volkensii also shows potential for engineered timber, where lamination and finger jointing could be used to increase the size of the products produced. Melia volkensii could also play a role in hybrid cross-laminated timber (CLT)--where other species could be mixed in to help improve the product’s mechanical properties and enhance structural integrity. However, to unlock Melia volkensii’s potential for engineered timber, we must first conduct durability tests to assess how well Melia volkensii timber resists physical weathering, mechanical stress,fungi, and insects. 

With pine, we should proceed with cautious optimism. 

Early tests on pine showed enough potential to warrant a next phase that would include building and testing full-scale mass timber prototypes. These tests will provide a critical data point: the performance of the final engineered product, not just the raw material.

Testing infrastructure in East Africa is improving, but still young

With a limited number of Melia samples and technical hiccups in the testing process, it was difficult to draw firm conclusions about long-term performance of either species. But the process built valuable testing capacity at the University of Nairobi–and revealed where protocols need to be strengthened going forward.

Action Group 2: Making timber easy to approve is key to mainstreaming its use

While KEFRI and Ardhi na Mbao are focused on materials, Arup’s action group is working further downstream—at the intersection of design and regulation. Their aim is to make it easier for architects, engineers, and county officials to say “yes” to timber construction.

Right now, even when timber performs well and is cost-competitive, regulatory uncertainty can stall adoption. Most architects and engineers, including those responsible for giving building approvals, have little experience in timber as a construction material. And without clear documentation or precedents, many decision-makers are hesitant to innovate. 

So Arup is developing a suite of standardised timber components for typical housing types. These are simple, repeatable designs with clear load tables and connection details that align with Kenya’s adoption of Eurocode 5.

Their early findings show:

There is strong interest from public agencies in accelerating timber adoption.

From the State Department of Public Works to the National Construction Authority, many key institutions are already using timber and expressed eagerness to use more—if the right tools and templates are in place. 

The biggest barrier to non-structural timber uptake in Kenya right now is the lack of formal guidance to show builders and regulators how to use timber within the current code.   

Kenya’s building code adopts Eurocode 5 for timber, but without national annexes or practical guidance, it’s difficult to interpret or apply. So even where timber materials are cost-competitive with other products, many developers are hesitant. 

The barrier isn’t always policy–sometimes it’s clarity 

By helping to interpret building codes, creating training materials, and supporting government partners in creating user-friendly guidance, Arup’s project can help with the “last mile” of policy work. This work to ensure users understand–and feel comfortable using–new policy is often overlooked, but it’s critical if timber is going to become mainstream.

Action Group 3: Changing minds about timber starts with introducing it in public spaces 

With the The GoDown Arts Centre project, the focus isn’t materials or codes–it’s perception. Their team is exploring how people relate to timber in public life.

Working in Nairobi’s Dunga Road area, the Go Down is using public art, storytelling, and design to reimagine timber as a visible, desirable part of everyday life. The project is engaging young artists, local businesses, street vendors, and community members to reimagine the city–with timber. 

Here’s what they are discovering:

Timber is already here—but often invisible. 

In the “Making Space” project, artists conducting a street audit noticed that informal structures like guard houses and kiosks often use timber. But those structures are often seen as makeshift and messy. In the project, the GoDown is asking its community how to help people see timber differently: as modern and professional. 

Artists are natural champions for using wood. 

In co-design sessions, young creatives gravitated to timber for aesthetic reasons first, rather than environmental ones. For example, they proposed public benches made from wood because it feels warm and welcoming. Their reaction was a reminder that people might gravitate to biobased materials for a variety of reasons. 

Community engagement must be relational, not transactional. 

In their planning work around a timber pedestrian bridge, the GoDown team is focused on building trust with nearby factories, businesses, and other stakeholders along the river. They are finding that this trust-building with neighbours is essential. By seeing its neighbours as co-owners of shared space and challenges, the GoDown is using the problem of shared river stewardship as yet another opportunity to build community.

Change happens not through single projects, but through layered systems working together.

Collectively, these three action groups are more than just a few projects. They are modeling how change happens in layered systems—agroforestry, engineering, regulation, culture, finance. Their work reminds us that regenerative forest economies are not just about planting trees, or even just about building with them. They are about creating ecosystems of trust, skill, and imagination.

Listening across the action groups, we can hear some crosscutting insights emerging:

• Iterating is always better than trying for initial perfection. Every group is discovering that early drafts and “good enough” prototypes move them forward faster than waiting for polished final versions.

• Networks are at the center of ecosystems. Each group’s success is enabled by connections—lab partnerships, relationships with key government authorities, connections to farmers, neighborhood bonds, etc. Building those relational bridges has proven to be just as important as ensuring we have the materials right. 

• Standards and trust are cumulative. Each of these pilots is building credibility in small ways that, together, raise the overall confidence curve for timber.

  
  

Above all, these groups are proving that action-based, collaborative learning is what works when we’re trying to impact a whole ecosystem.