LOCALLY-MADE ROOFING TILES ENTER THIRD DECADE OF USE IN MALAWI.

In the early 1980's the Malawi Rural Housing Programme was assisted by the British Council to assign a group of technicians to come over to Britain for familiarisation with the new form of lightweight roofing tiles recently developed at JPM Parry workshops in Cradley Heath. Co-incidentally a young overseas development worker, Chris Stephens who was attending a course at Selly Oak College, also visited JPA's Cradley Heath base, at about the same time The Government Rural Housing Programme then went on to implement projects in many parts of Malawi, first using the 1m long corrugated roof sheets (the form in which the technology first appeared) and then the small 'pantile' a traditional profile. 'Parry tiles' is now the generic description of a product, which can be seen in many parts of Malawi. The industry is now graduating to the larger and more efficient semi sheet, a quarter square metre, large format, tile.

Parry technician Abou Manneh from the Gambia giving instruction to Malawi trainees in semi sheet roof construction in Lilongwe	Trainee tilemakers using Parry machine to produce small format tiles in Blantyre
Semi sheet roofs in Nkota-Kota	A 15 year old house and garage at the Rural Housing centre near Mzuzu

Chris Stephens now lives in Malawi and runs a successful pottery company with operations in Dedza and Nkota-Kota. Because of an inclination to be as self sufficient as possible and create the maximum number of livelihoods in Malawi, he has organised the construction of all his own buildings and wherever possible produced the elements with which they were constructed.

In 2003, DFID, the UK Government's overseas development arm, commissioned a training course attended by existing and aspiring tile makers from Mzuzu, Lilongwe, Blantyre and Nkota-Kota.

In the following weeks the two trainers went on to assist the commissioning of new production plants supplied through various agencies. It now seems probable that a proportion of the output of these new plants will be used to roof new schools and education offices, which will be constructed in the next few years.

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