Housing stakeholders in fresh push to tackle deficit, rethink supply approach

Stakeholders in the built sector are in a fresh push to ramp up supply and narrow the estimated 20 million housing deficit in Africa’s most populous nation.

They believe that there is a need to rethink the approach to meeting housing needs which have largely favoured the high and middle-income earners to a point of oversupply of housing units in those segments.

“When you consider the huge number of unoccupied finished houses across major cities in Nigeria, it becomes apparent that deficit in housing units is not as much a problem as lack of affordable housing units,” P Bhaskar Rao, managing director, West African Ceramics Limited (WACL), said.

Nigeria has over 20 million housing deficit that requires about N550 trillion and 700,000 housing units to be built annually over the next two decades to bridge, according to the World Bank. This is against an annual housing output estimated at 100,000 units for a 200 million population.

Concerned about the state of the country’s housing situation coupled with the near-absence of mortgage and affordable housing for low-income earners, these stakeholders have committed to building support for the sector.

The ongoing efforts, which cut across federal and state governments which should provide good policies to enable investment, and private sector operators, are expected to lead to increased supply and narrow the existing gap.

According to the stakeholders, the existing demand-supply gap finds an explanation in the supply shortage which, in turn, finds an explanation in the high cost of building materials that constitute about 70 percent of overall construction cost. Other costs are found in labour, funding and infrastructure.

Besides suggestions for collaboration among product suppliers and the adoption of models that could increase supply, building materials manufacturers say they are committed to reducing the high cost of construction through creative and innovative solutions.

This commitment emanated from a real estate event discussion in Abuja which centred on ‘Pragmatic Strategies for Increasing Affordable Housing Stock Post-Covid-19.”

It was revealed from the discussion that the housing market already has a very attractive and affordable solution known as ‘N1 million Expandable Core House.’ This is one million naira house being promoted by Millard Fuller Foundation (MFF).

Authorities of MFF explained that the solution is a 25sqm core house expandable in two phases to 2-bedroom and 3-bedroom. “The One Million Naira House is a ‘Tiny House’ solution that prioritises the needs of ordinary people,” the MFF authorities explained further.

On the building materials solution supply side aimed to reduce construction cost, Lafarge Africa is leading the pack. Others are Nigerian Building and Road Research Institute (NBRRI), and WACL, a producer of the Royal brand of tiles, marbles and accessories.

Lafarge noted that with a growing population, housing needs have increased; meaning that there is a need to produce houses in millions per annum. “But the current way of building cannot offer the desired solution; there is a lack of innovation and speed and cost of materials and labour is rising,” Gbenga Onimowo, Commercial Director at Lafarge Africa, noted.

“We need to disrupt the way houses are built, we need to build better, affordable and eco-friendly buildings while maintaining cost-efficient budgets; we need to reduce construction timelines,” Onimowo advised.

He disclosed that Lafarge has come up with a Construction 3D Printing solution which is a new technology that involves moulding of a structure by placing volumes of material in sequential layers on top of one another from ground up.

It ensures up to 60 percent of savings in terms of material cost. It also increases construction speed and productivity up to twice as fast. With this, Onimowo assured, Lafarge could reduce construction time by up to 70 percent.

On its part, NBRRI, a federal government institute responsible for researching and developing road and building materials for the Nigerian building industry, is innovating and creating alternative building materials with local content.

An official of the company listed some of the innovations NBRRI has made as a contributor to the provision of alternative building materials. One of them is the manual brick-making machine which has been successfully used in the construction of houses and can be commercialised.

Laterite Grinding Machine is another. “This machine grinds laterite to required mesh size for brick/block production; it eliminates materials wastes or laterite rejects, guarantees high productivity and high quality of bricks/blocks produced; it is electrically operated, has grinding and sieving mechanism; it is ideal for use in mass housing delivery,” the official explained.