Rise International completes eucalyptus-pole football stadium in Lesotho

Rise International has built the Stadium of Life, a 1,280-seat football venue in Maseru, Lesotho, using 8,584 treated eucalyptus poles and sandstone offcuts. Designed for social enterprise Kick4Life, it is the first permanent home for Lesotho's men's and women's national teams. The project emerged from Rise's Loco programme, which trains rural youth in construction. Community participatory design workshops ran for ten months, after which three participants became construction leads. The open-air stadium covers 900 square metres, peaks at five metres, and incorporates litema-inspired zigzag patterns. Landscaping with permeable surfaces and native plants mitigates flooding and soil erosion. All timber is FSC-certified from MTO Forestry's plantations in Mpumalanga, South Africa. Future phases will add repurposed shipping-container changing rooms and toilets. Rise International says commercial costs would have been five to six times higher.