Who is the largest affordable housing developer in Africa? It’s the people. No one on the continent builds more affordable housing than the people themselves. Often in informal settlements, building step by step and over time, and mostly without formal financing. This demonstrates the sheer ingenuity, resilience, and economic power of the so-called urban poor. One wonders what we could do to assist. What conditions can we create to foster a more conducive environment? How can we direct such economic prowess towards building more liveable settlements with access to basic services such as water, sanitation, and electricity? Providing a person or a family with a plot with tenure security in a well-planned neighborhood is often all it takes. It allows the owner to invest, build up wealth, and secure it for the next generation. Ms. Kristofina, pictured below, lived all her life in sub-standard rental housing. In 2021, she managed to purchase a plot for USD 600 from a local sites and services programme in Oshakati, northern Namibia, implemented by Development Workshop Namibia. By owning land, she suddenly became eligible for a small grant from a government housing scheme. She added her own savings, and her family contributed. Within 15 months, she built her house for the equivalent of USD 8,000. That’s how land unleashes investment. #sitesandservices #affordablehousing #developmentworkshopnamibia
Jan King
3mo
There is two sides to the coin: 1. The process described might unlock the ability to borrow money for further improvement, expansion and possibly starting a business. 2. While they do it themselves and refrain from becoming slaves through the banking system, they experience the type of freedom most of us can just dream about. I have been debt free for over a decade and cannot describe how much freedom I got. Becoming a slave of debt will not ever happen again in my lifetime.
Leslie Mukwedeya
3mo
This is a conversation we would like to have. A cookie cutter approach in rolling out inappropriate financing for affordable housing just doesn't work (most are recipients aren't considered bankable and often priced out of the market by lenders). There's are very executable and viable alternatives. About time we pivoted to the practical.
rowena marthinus
2mo
You are correct and in most cases it is the women of this continent that drives construction of homes for our families. Great read!
Janick Oriti
2mo
This is great Beat Weber and there is potential especially in Zambia 🇿🇲 for such good work. I would like to introduce you to a project and discuss a possible collab on it.
We may blame the authorities today for not changing the laws of the past as they have not swiftly changed it for the citizens. Governments accross africa owns so much land that they could just allocate like Europe did after world wars , municipalities are responsible for bulk services and the community must choose a prebuilt design house and then fetch it from a factory to build it by themselves with family and neighbors. They start paying once they move in 20/30 years with zero interest. The government tender model with over priced construction teams has failed Africans. Low wealth communities leave their homes to build for others sometimes the most expensive and most fancy and most difficult infrastructure and goes back to their own low wealth communities waiting for government to build them overpriced substandard home!
David Miet
2mo
Beat Weber this is also a good solution (providing plots of lands in well-planned neighborhoods for an affordable price) in more rich countries such as France, where a large part of the population still cannot access to descent housing property outside of social housing. Here is an exemple of ongoing experimentation in Clermont-Ferrand conducted by Villes Vivantes, where the size of the plot is tailored made according to the design of the futur house, allowing confortable and affordable projects on very tiny plots. https://lagrandeplaine.fr/
Julian Johnson
3mo
If there was a way to enable fractional saving in hard currency, that would shield poor Africans from inflation. Typically a house is built over time, the family saving, or contributing to a community saving program. Those savings lose value as the currency inflates and buying power diminishes. Poor people generally don’t save into hard currency, it isn’t considered accessible if considered at all. Is this being done already? I’m sure I’m missing something.
Kelvin Campbell
2mo
Housing is not a problem to be solved, especially when the problem is self-inflicted. Housing is a potential to be realised by people. After all, we did it for over three hundred generations. It’s only in the past three generations we replaced an evolutionary process of housing development with a social utopian model. Governments should put their efforts into creating the enabling conditions for neighbourhood-focussed solutions, driven by people, to emerge - parcelled land is the best condition to release this emergence! John FC Turner, author of ‘Housing by People’ said, “Informal settlements are cities in progress.” We would do well to heed this!
Architect and Urban Designer
2moSouth America, and Peru specifically has impressive examples of autonomous development as suggested by Kelvin Campbell in referring to John FC Turner's accounts. At Villa El Salvador, on the outskirts of Lima, which I visited in 2001, the simple act of organised squatting on a grid laid out with chalk lines in the early 1970's later enabled efficient services upgrades. It is now a solid, second to third generation piece of city with a wide range of facilities and an immensely proud population who continues to maintain a healthy distrust of national government. My research indicated that political trust largely ends at mayoral level because the culture supports the idea of politicians being accessible. It is as simple as being able to grab a mayor by the ear while each time voting for a different party when the national elections come around.