It could be the material of the future. A 28-year-old Malian engineer, a doctoral student at the University of Ottawa in Canada, is developing an alternative to concrete, a product made from recycled objects, including plastic waste. An innovative construction solution, cheaper and less polluting.

It all started when Moussa Thiam was a student in Bamako. A waste transit depot was set up near his home: “The population did not like it at all and there were arguments. Our neighborhood did not want to be Bamako’s dumping ground. So I thought to myself: OK, waste is produced every day, why must that be a problem for us? “

The idea caught on. The engineer from Nioro du Sahel then imagines a new material, cheap and environmentally friendly: “In concrete, we have gravel, sand, water and cement. But we no longer use cement, which is really expensive in our countries there, and we use plastic waste, which comes back to us at almost zero francs. It is mixed with gravel and sand in an oven which is currently manual at a temperature of over 100 degrees. This gives us a homogeneous mixture which has roughly the characteristics of bitumen and which can have properties similar to cement-based concrete ”.

And the first tests give satisfactory results: “Not only for the construction of secondary roads, for paving houses, that is to say interior decoration, but also it allows us to make slabs as for concrete. cement-based ‘.

Research continues to extend it to other uses. For Moussa Thiam, for sure, it will be a small revolution. He already won first prize at the Next Einstein Forum, an international scientific gathering, last year.

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Comme beaucoup de personnes j’ai connu l’Afrique à travers des stéréotypes : l’Afrique est pauvre, il y a la guerre, famine… Je suis devenu entrepreneur pour briser ces clichés et participer à la construction du continent. J’ai lancé plusieurs entreprises dont Kareea (Formation et développement web), Tutorys (Plate-forme de e-learning), AfrikanFunding (Plate-forme de crowdfunding). Après un échec sur ma startup Tutorys, à cause d’une mauvaise exécution Business, un manque de réseau, pas de mentor, je suis parti 6 mois en immersion dans l’écosystème Tech au Sénégal. J’ai rencontré de nombreux entrepreneurs passionnés, talentueux et déterminés. A mon retour sur Paris je décide de raconter leur histoire en créant le média AfrikaTech. L'objectif est de soutenir les entrepreneurs qui se battent quotidiennement en Afrique en leur offrant la visibilité, les connaissances, le réseautage et les capitaux nécessaires pour réussir. L'Afrique de demain se construit aujourd'hui ensemble. Rejoignez-nous ! LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boubacardiallo

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