Housing sector investors have faulted President Muhammadu Buhari and other heads of government in Africa for failing to keep their promises on housing delivery in their countries.
According to the investors, aside from failing to deliver houses directly to their citizens, these heads of government also lack the political will to encourage investment in the housing sector by providing an enabling environment for private developers to build houses.
They said lack of political will is the reason the present government in Nigeria has delivered less than 3,000 housing units in seven years under its National Housing Programme after promising to deliver one million units yearly.
The investors who spoke at an online conference organized by Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers, Lagos State Chapter, said this development was anti-growth and development.
“When I came into Nigeria, I always heard about the 17 million housing units deficit. When the All Progressives Congress government in Nigeria came to power about seven years ago, they said they would do a million affordable homes yearly, but today, they haven’t done even 3,000 homes.
“If you look at Africa’s population today, which is over 1.4 billion, there is a deficit of at least 100 million housing units. In West Africa, there is a deficit of 40 million units,” Mustapha Njie, CEO of Taf Africa Global, said.
Taf Africa Global is the leading real estate investor and developer in The Gambia with an ambitious target of delivering 1 million housing units by 2040. It has strong footprints in other African countries.
In Nigeria, for instance, the company is behind the RivTaf Golf Estate in Port Harcourt, which it did in partnership with the Rivers State government. The estate consists of about 1,000 housing units.
Stressing the need for political will from the government to boost housing delivery, Njie said the African real estate market needs political will to deliver affordable housing for citizens.
He said if African developers were waiting for project partners to come into the real estate market, the governments must be serious by providing the land to help the developers build affordable housing in large numbers.
“The second part is finance; people need houses but the mortgage rate is too high or not even available in most West Africa countries,” he said.
On his part, Abdel Nasser Taha, CEO of New Concept Investment, Egypt, emphasised the need for housing sector operators to consistently exchange ideas to improve their expertise. He observed that Africa had common problems regarding housing, economy and there were business risks, hence the need to partner and co-pilot projects geared towards development of the sector and the people.
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Taha said the Egyptian government had embarked on creation of many cities to solve housing issues and rising urbanisation. “The government started by creating infrastructure, electricity, a network of roads for connectivity and strategic projects in each new city. There is economic and strategic planning by the government. There is also the integration between the city and the industry,” he added.
Inutu Zaloumis, managing director of Pam Golding Properties in Zambia, said the last two decades had been very challenging for the Zambia real estate sector, adding that the country invested heavily in infrastructure development without looking at how the infrastructure could be monetised.
The consequence, according to him, was that the country was one of the first to default on the sovereign debt. This development, she said, affected the performance of the real estate market in Zambia.
“All lands in Zambia are vested in the hands of the president; we have traditional and titled lands, which are owned by traditional chiefs. A chief cannot give more than 200 hectares of land. Security of tenure on land is guaranteed; there is no land grabbing and the process is digitized,” Zaloumis said.
