Title
Housing Finance in Africa: A review of Africa’s housing finance markets - Yearbook 2020
Tags
Centre for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa
Description
2020 will forever be remembered as the year we all stayed at home. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments across the continent implemented stringent lockdown regulations. Aside from the economic impact, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated the persistent state of disaster in which a majority of urban households across the continent live, whether in informal settlements, tenement blocks, inner city buildings, lower-income townships, or suburbs; and whether they rent, or own, or share their homes.
Our first challenge is to address the risks that households face, whether in the face of COVID-19 or any other emergency. There are significant opportunities to drive incremental home improvement products and finance. These interventions will also have a direct impact on the progress of the Sustainable Development Goals. Good housing drives access to basic services and impacts profoundly on the health and well-being of low income households.
Our second challenge is to address the effects on the economy caused by the lockdown, and to stimulate economic recovery at the domestic level. The construction, maintenance and transacting of housing contributes substantially to economic growth and job creation, which can have very tangible local impacts. Governments should seek to champion affordable housing as a key part of their economic recovery strategies.
Our third challenge in a post-COVID environment is to build resilience against future shocks. Housing sits at the centre of a household’s experience of global emergencies such as the pandemic, or events which arise as a result of climate change. While we build for structural resilience, the performance of the housing asset is also critical to a household’s ability to withstand stresses. Land regularization measures can be ably supported with recent innovations, such as blockchain technology.
Data is fundamental to our ability to act, and it is the transparency of information that really creates potential. But when practitioners compete in how they access data, rather than in how they use it, we are wasting resources. An open source approach can contribute towards an overall cost savings in the actual product, as well as the time taken to achieve its delivery.
The housing strategy across Africa must work to address risk, stimulate recovery, and ensure resilience. Quality, affordable housing becomes all the more important in a post-COVID world, while we need to do much more with much less. This may just be the opportunity that Africa’s affordable housing sector needs to truly grow and develop to the demands of the continent.
