By the next five years, the Nigerian property and labour markets shall have got a big boost with an additional 500,000 homes supply and 1.5 million jobs creation, both to be facilitated and supported respectively by the Family Homes Fund (FHF) Limited.
The fund is a partnership between the Federal Ministry of Finance and the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority as founding shareholders.
It is expected that the fund will be the largest affordable housing focused-fund in Sub-Sahara Africa, leveraging its significant capital, which is in excess of N1trillion by 2023, to facilitate access to affordable housing for millions of Nigerians on low to medium income.
Over time, there have been significant efforts at various levels, including government ministries, agencies and the private sector, at addressing the acute need for affordable housing in Nigeria without much success.
But with FHF initiative, there are good reasons for optimism that new partnerships and initiatives supported by the federal and state governments will help provide the over 17million new homes Nigeria needs over the next 15 years.
It has to be pointed out, however, that the capital which the fund has to leverage to support the supply of new homes for families on low to medium income is only a means to an end. The key priority for the fund is to take advantage of the opportunity a large-scale house building programme offers to create jobs. These are jobs that are sustainable and offer families security, improved quality of life and hope.
With a projected cumulative spend of up to N1trillion by 2023 on various inputs into the house building process including doors, windows, tiles, roofing materials, blocks, paving stones, paint etc, there is opportunity to incubate large numbers of small scale industries, creating significant employment.
The fund aims to catalyse the creation of new jobs through the investments it makes. Alongside investment by other players in the housing sector, Nigeria has a real opportunity to achieve positive real positive impact on families, women who often carry the biggest burden in poor households and young people. At national level, when this potential effectively harnessed, could generate up to 1.5 percent increase to the GDP by 2023.
The Fund’s approach to creating jobs will be driven by 3 priorities. These are policy, partnership and people.
The Fund aims to support ongoing dialogue around development of a local contents framework for inputs into the house-building process. A long-term objective is to ensure that up to 80 percent of manufactured inputs are locally produced.
Through partnership, Nigeria can achieve much more than any single player can. The fund aims to build strong partnerships with many institutions and agencies to maximize this opportunity. It will work with existing and new partners in the building materials industry offering where appropriate guaranteed purchase commitments, thus enabling critical access to capital for investment.
Through its investments, the fund will equip a new generation of young Nigerians with high-level skills in modern methods of construction and technologies and, through a combination of these activities, the FHF aims to create or support up to 1,500,000 jobs by 2023, making a real difference to the quality of life of their families and the economy.
