Building a house in the poorest villages of southern Mali has for years involved cutting trees for timber frames and struggling to save cash for a corrugated iron roof. Now families are turning to an alternative: Nubian-style domed mud-brick homes that are cheaper, protect fast-vanishing local forests and make homes cooler in the worsening summer heat, experts say. Earthen homes with vaulted brick roofs - a style adopted from Nubia in northern Sudan - are being promoted across the Sahel, including in Burkina Faso, Senegal and Mauritania, as part of efforts to build resilience to climate change. "Most people, more than half, don't have the decent housing they dream of because it costs too much to build. This is going to change with the Nubian vault," predicted Chiaka Sidibe, 52, a mason in Massako, one of the Malian communities adopting the new building style. "You just have to make mud bricks that don't cost money, and fellow villagers help you to build your house," he said.