In August 2015, NKA Foundation organizes a call for ideas and an international architectural competition to promote its activity on the sites that it occupies in Burkina Faso and Ghana. The “Mud Hut Competition 2014, reinventing the African mud hut together” is a competition open to young architects who think that earthen architecture, with strong traditional and rural connotation, can be beautiful and innovative. The subject, a family-housing unit built for less than $ 8,000, must help the rehabilitation of traditional building techniques and promote local expertise and skilled workers. In this competition, ten projects are selected, the first three are offered the opportunity to come and build in the village of Abetenim, in central Ghana, in the Ashanti kingdom, their prototype. M.A.M.O.T.H. offers then the Sankofa House (competition1st prize), a rewriting of the traditional Ghanaian house. Inspired by the recognizable silhouettes of Ashanti’s buildings (West African population living in Ghana), the association draws a courtyard building with sloping roofs and colorful facades. The project emphasizes the use of available resources and employment to local artisans. Because the topic is about producing an habitat designed for Ghanaian families, the design is simple, practical and economical. The global climatic approach, in addition to a good orientation of the building on site, is simply to rediscover the thermal properties of materials such as earth and natural fibers.

In Ghana, as in many countries in West Africa, stereotypes persist on earth construction and its symbol and image of the poor farmer’s house. Yet this ancient architecture was quickly abandoned in favor of more «modern» constructions made of cement blocks and other industrial materials that are not only very expensive because mostly imported from abroad, but also thermally very unsuited to tropical climate so particular this region of the world. Today, in cities until bush villages, cement has become indispensable in spite of its price and poor quality and the increasingly high cost of these materials makes homeownership for low-income families almost impossible. However, in Abetenim and as in many other villages in Ghana, almost all of the houses (98%) are built with local red earth, available in large quantities and free, the laterite. These houses often «cobbled together» years after years or just not maintained are severely damaged each rainy season. The ruined buildings punctuate the everyday landscape of these communities that can no longer imagine this earthen architecture as efficient, safe and sustainable. Craftsmen who have turned to industrial materials used in major projects in the region have gradually forgot skills and know-how. Unfortunately concrete structures, even built sometimes less than ten years, are beginning to deteriorate rapidly too in this extreme climate, or because of inappropriate design, such as the recurrent use of flat roofs «as in Europe «or by negligence on the quality of concrete, the coating of steels, structural design ...