SA Affordable Housing September / October 2020 | Page 10

EVENTS
Affordable market in Africa is
booming despite pandemic
By Eamonn Ryan
An Affordable Housing Development in the Post Covid-19 Era webinar
was hosted by GBB Venture, moderated by Davina Wood, principal of the
Affordable Housing Institute on 30 June. Speakers were Nigerians Mukhtar
Aliyu of Urban Shelter and Sam Odia, chief executive of The Millard Fuller
Foundation and Gambia Mustapha Njie, CEO of TAF Africa Global.
The World Health Organisation estimates that a further
23 million Africans will be driven into poverty as a
result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
All three speakers agreed that the long-term impact of
Covid-19 will be to stimulate the lower-end affordable
housing market, a housing segment which is extremely pricesensitive
and consequently this is likely to grow as incomes
come under pressure following global economy lockdowns.
In Nigeria, there was an uptrend in sales of units and deposits
being put down. An approximately 25% devaluation in
the value of Nigeria’s currency, the Niara, had similarly
underpinned the property market as people sought to get
out of liquid currency and into hard assets such as property,
noted Odia. He says his development company had started up
a new development in the middle of the lockdown, and was
expecting “a lot more work”.
In Gambia, the residential market has
been underpinned by the large number of
guest workers in the country, which is almost
entirely surrounded by Senegal.
Issues of hygiene and social distancing
were not high priorities to this market,
given isolation under their crowded living
conditions is almost impossible, as is regular
handwashing and hygiene in an environment
where running water is a rarity. In fact, most
residents of informal settlements regarded
it as “a joke”. Consequently, says Odia, “very
little has changed in terms of living habits,”
and Njie noted that there was widespread
disbelief even in the existence of the virus.
The subject has been obfuscated by a
continually moving expectation of when the
pandemic would peak in Africa – first set in
April, then July and some people talking of
later in the year.
However, problems existed in the
extension of lockdown rules, for instance
in Nigeria which prohibited more than 35 workers on a single
site, which had enormously slowed down work on large
developments. Some workers have been unable to return to
work, especially in Gambia with its high rate of guest worker.
Aliyu says his company has “refocused its energies” as a
result of the pandemic, concentrating even more on the lower
end of the market. “Despite the short-term shock, we are
bullish for the long term as the need for affordable housing is
ever present.”
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Odia says that his long-term expectation post-Covid-19 is a
faster move towards the lower end of the market (the bottom
40%) as there is “a lot less money at the top end of the
market”. Consequently, his expectation is for a stronger move
towards micro-financing products for homes in the price region
An affordable housing project in Cross River State in Nigeria.
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