Roofing in Liberia

Liberia, on the rain-soaked Atlantic coast between Sierra Leone and Côte d'Ivoire, has a roofing story typical of the West African forest belt: thatched houses in villages, gradually replaced by corrugated metal sheet, known locally as "zinc".

Climate and hazards

The climate is hot and humid, with a long, very wet rainy season. Thatch and timber are exposed to rot and insects, and roofs must shed heavy rain quickly.

Roofing history

Among the Kpelle, Liberia's largest ethnic group, the traditional house was a one-room round hut of wattle-and-daub with a conical thatched roof. Square houses with three rooms and an open porch are now the more common form, alongside rectangular two-room houses with very wide porches. Anthropological accounts note that zinc roofs gradually replaced thatch, especially where people had access to cash employment, and that the round thatched hut survives mainly in remote villages. Civil war from 1989 to 2003 displaced many rural communities and disrupted building traditions.

Traditional and vernacular roofs

• Round hut: wattle-and-daub walls under a conical thatched roof.
• Square and rectangular houses: thatched or zinc-roofed, with open porches.

Roofing today

The 2020 Afrobarometer survey of Liberia recorded:

Main roof material	Share of respondents (2020)
Metal, aluminium, tin or zinc	82.9%
Thatch or grass	11.4%
Tiles	2.0%
Concrete	1.8%
Asbestos	0.9%
Plastic sheets	0.6%

Afrobarometer surveys interview about 1,200 adults per country; these figures are unweighted counts in the survey sample. The 2007 Core Welfare Indicators Questionnaire used the categories thatch/grass/straw, corrugated iron/zinc/tin, tarpaulin or plastic sheets, cement or concrete, roofing tiles and asbestos.

Local roofing terms

• zinc (Liberian English): corrugated metal roof sheet.

Sources and gaps

Published research on Liberian roofing is limited.

Survey shares are unweighted. Published sources on Americo-Liberian settler houses in Monrovia and other coastal towns, on regulation and on industry: published information is limited.