Special Session - Africa Affordable Housing Compact – Deal Room Investor Session (WUF13)

Excellencies, honorable Ministers, distinguished delegates, partners, and friends.
Good afternoon and a warm welcome to this special session of the 13th World Urban Forum.
I'm Delek Tuna of ANEws and it's my privilege to guide us through the next 2 hours.
We're here today for the special session of the Africa Affordable Housing Compact, the deal Room Investor Session, convened by UN Habitats Regional Office for Africa, together with Shelter Africa Development Bank.
The format of our session is designed as a journey.
We begin with a ministerial round table on the enabling conditions for delivery, move into a deal room of live investment ready projects and close with a C suit panel on the capital required to scale.
To open, to set the strategic frame for this compact, it's my privilege to invite to the stage the Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of UN Habitat, Her Excellency Anna Claudia Rospa.
Madam Executive Director, the floor is yours.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
Good afternoon.
Your Excellency.
It is a privilege to have you here, the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, Amina Mohammed, honorable ministers, ambassadors, distinguished partners from the investor community, the private sector.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the session on the Africa Affordable Housing Compact here at the 13th session of the World Urban Forum.
It is a privilege to convene this session here in Baku at a moment where we as a global, urban community, we are taking stock of the new urban agenda after ten years of its endorsement in Quito, Ecuador in 2016 and ahead of the upcoming ten years of the new urban agenda and the 2030 agenda with only four years to go and in the context where an African urban transition is now unfolding, and faster actually if compared with other regions of the world.
Let me briefly set up the scene.
Africa already has a housing deficit that exceeds 60 million units, and on current trajectories, it will surpass 130 million by 2030.
We do have a financing gap.
We have a financing gap of more than $1.4 trillion.
We are talking about the population that's going to grow by 2050, we're expecting to have 600000000-900 million people coming to cities in Africa.
These numbers describe the magnitude, the scale of the challenge that we are facing in Africa, where actually the major bulk of the upcoming urbanization together with Southeast Asia is concentrated.
But also, we can look at the other side of the coin.
This represents amazing investment opportunities across housing, municipal infrastructure, climate resilient construction, and the green building transition ahead of us.
Just six weeks ago, we gathered together I Arabi at the Second Africa Urban Forum convened by the African Union and the government of Kenya.
So you delivered the Nairobi Declaration, and it is a clear political mandate from Africa member states to accelerate affordable housing delivery, to mobilize the resources, the investments, and move from declaration to action to implementation.
The Nairobi Declaration carries the voice of the continent, governments, mayors, African Union, development partners, the private sector, and the civil society aligned around a single proposition that Africa's urban future will be decided by what we build, finance, and deliver in this decade.
The Africa Affordable Housing Compact convened by UN Habitats Regional Office for Africa.
It is the continental platform built to carry that mandate forward.
The compact is anchored on four operational pillars, the Africa Affordable Housing Fellowship, which builds the leadership this transition demands, the Affordable Housing Deal platform, which turns projects into investments, the Housing Data Hub, which grounds decisions in evidence, and country Housing compacts, which translates continental ambition into national delivery.
This is the architecture that we brought to Baku today, and this session is designed to take it from concept into motion.
So it's now my distinct honor to invite Her Excelleny Amina Mohammed, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations and chair of the United Nations Sustainable Development Group to deliver opening remarks.
The DSGs leadership across the sustainable development agenda and her longstanding championship of Africa's urban transition make her presence with us today especially meaningful.
Madam Deputy Secretary-General, the floor is yours.
Okay.
Thank you very much, Honorable Ministers, Excellencies, our distinguished delegates, Anna Claudia, our Executive Director of UN Habitat, partners in the private sector, the investor community, our communities, friends and colleagues, good afternoon.
It really is a privilege to open the special session of the Africa Affordable Housing Compact here in Baku at the midpoint of the new urban agenda and a quest for Agenda 2063 in Africa.
The first place where opportunity begins or where it is denied is a home.
Yet for more than one out of every three people on our planet, there is no adequate physical manifestation of what a home is.
More than 1.1 billion people live in informal settlements and over 300 million have no housing at all.
Africa carries a disproportionate share of that burden.
A Claudia has given us the stats.
Despite the immense scale of that challenge, Africa also carries the solutions.
Africa's urban transition is one of the largest long term investment opportunities of our time and it does span housing and our municipal infrastructure, but also climate resilience, logistics, construction value chains, and urban economic development, which means jobs and technology and innovation.
By 2050, Africa's population will reach 2.5 billion and most of that growth concentrated in cities.
Africa's political commitment, as we heard, is equally clear through the Nairobi Declaration, but also that the African Union has placed urbanization and housing at the center of the 2063 agenda with a call to action to provide opportunities for all Africans to have decent and affordable housing in clean, secure, and well planned environments.
What we need to do now is to connect that ambition to the capital, link national strategies to finance, match technical capacity with implementation partners, ensure that new technologies and new skills generate decent jobs, solutions, and sustainable profits, and to build delivery platforms for bankable pipelines that operate at the scale that is needed to respond to the challenges we have.
Excellencies, we often say that home is where the heart is.
Housing also sits at the heart of the sustainable development goals.
Adequate housing, and you create the conditions in which every other goal can take root.
Adequate affordable houses deliver on poverty eradication because a secure dwelling is the largest asset a low income family will ever hold.
They deliver on health through better indoor air and sanitation.
They deliver on gender equality because secure tenure gives a woman standing of her own.
They deliver on climate and resilience because Africa's housing stock has not yet been built.
Every decision we take now unlocks in decades of emissions or avoids them.
They deliver on decent work because every home built creates decent jobs along the whole construction chain and they deliver on the promise of sustainable cities that try to leave no one behind.
Yet in spite of knowing all of this, Africa receives less than 3% of global housing finance, while holding nearly 20% of the world's urban population.
Friends, Africa's voice and Africa's action can drive the transformation by reshaping the global and regional financing systems that determine who gets capital and on what terms, by challenging credit rating frameworks that misprice Africa's risk, by mobilizing African resources for African priorities.
Public finance will be catalytic, yet public finance alone will not be enough to tackle the scale of Africa's housing deficit.
That's why the private sector as a sector, is a partner in this work, a co architect for African housing transitions.
African urbanization is one of the largest long term investments as we said in the global economy today.
To the developers, builders, banks, mortgage refinance institutions, pension funds, our insurers, materials manufacturers, technology innovators, institutional investors, more especially our young architects and engineers in this room and outside, your engagement can turn Africa's housing pipeline into the world's largest engine for just inclusive and low carbon growth.
The Africa Affordable Housing Compact is the UN anchored platform built to move us beyond just the declarations.
It connects policy reform, project pipelines, and finance without duplicating what already exists.
It brings governments, development finance institutions, the private sector, philanthropy, and civil society around three operational pillars.
A deal platform that turns projects into investments, a data hub that grounds decisions in evidence, and an executive fellowship that builds the leadership of our future generations, our young people, leveraging their expertise and building the workforce that this transition demands.
The compact is anchored at country level through country housing compacts, practical, time bound partnerships that translate continental ambition in national delivery.
Excellencies, I'd like to conclude with three calls to action.
To governments, provide the regulatory clarity, the land tenure security, and the fiscal incentives that can turn intent into investments.
To our communities, starting at the grassroot level, continue to shape inclusive neighborhoods, champion resilient infrastructure, and turn your diversity into unity of purpose and a social source for social and economic transformation, and of course, justice.
Your voices must be the loudest that are heard as we shape the communities of the future.
To development finance institutions, use your balance sheets to de risk, to guarantee, to crowd in private capital, and engage in the pipeline deals that change lives, but do this at scale.
To institutional investors, pension funds, insurers, and the wider private sector, Africa's housing market is not the next frontier, it is the present one.
The cost of waiting is no longer measured only in unbuilt homes, but in foregone returns.
And to UN habitat and our wider UN family, together, we can deliver the urgency and the scale that the SDGs demand.
With five years to the 2030 agenda, the time for incremental progress has passed.
The time for delivery at scale with a sense of urgency through genuine partnerships is now.
I wish all of us fruitful discussions as we take out of these halls the action that needs to happen in our communities and in our countries.
I thank you.
Thank you, Deputy Secretary-General, for setting the frame for the discussion that is coming now.
Thank you for connecting housing to the whole of the 2030 agenda.
I hope the roundtable will now follow and build on the call to action that was set by the Deputy Secretary-General.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for Excellency Deputy Secretary-General remarks and thank you, Madam Executive Director, for your speech as well.
Now, I'd like to invite the Director of Eastern Horn of Africa UN Habitat Ishaku Mautumbi to moderate the ministerial roundtable.
Excellencies, ministers, thank you for joining us.
And I think we've already The DSG and the executive directors have outlined where we should go, the direction of travel, and a call.
The round table that we will have will be a number of ministers in the next 35 minutes.
We'll have ministers from Gambia and Eswatini, Angola, Liberia, and the Kingdom of Morocco, as well as Kenya.
Allow me now to invite to the stage, First of all, honorable, Your Excellency, Hamad Bar, Minister for Land, Regional Government and Religious Affairs of the Gambia.
Next, Honorable Simon Zuan, Principal Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Development Esuati.
And Excellency Louis Christopher, Secretary of State, Angola.
Excellency Fatima, Salif Deputy Minister for Urban Affairs, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Librarian, and of course, Yusuf Hussein, Secretary-General, Ministry of National, Territory, Urban Planning, the Kingdom of Morocco.
Finally, I would call on our Excellency Susan Nacomica, ambassador and permanent representative of the Republic of Kenya to UN Habitat.
Your Excelleny Minister Bar, we talked about the issues of land tenure and we've said that land is becoming of a key bottleneck for the delivery of affordable housing.
What reforms have Gambia done to advance or unlock this challenge of land and ensure that investors are more comfortable and the possibility to de risk things? Yes, of course.
Good afternoon, honorable Ministers.
Distinguish ladies and gentlemen.
This is a very important question and a very timely question, particularly for the Gambia, which have just launched the national lands policy from January this year to 2035.
That means it's on spot to ask us this question.
The Gambia is advancing a landmark national land policy of 2026 2025, that introduces the following.
Digital titling, certificate of customer ownership, streamlining conversion of customer land to state land.
The reforms aim to quickly make develop title land available for investors.
By focusing on transparency, digitalization, and fair access, they reduce disputes and speed up the supply of investment ready land.
Ey reforms that open opportunities to investors, tenure security, recognition of the three tenure system, customary freehold and leasehold, Certificate of customary ownerships, formal recognition of customary tenure, giving indigenous communities security transferable rights.
This reduces uncertainty for investors and enables structured land transaction.
Harmonize cert and customary laws to reduce conflicts and strengthen accountability.
Digital land registration establishment of a unified land information system to digitalize records, combat fraud, and speed up title issuance.
Equitable access, gender, youth and persons with disability, joint spousal titling, protection of women's inheritance rights, protection of vulnerable goods, digital and modern land administration, introduction of a modern digital system to reduce bureaucratic delays, introduction of land information system, improved valuation processes, land use planning and environmental sustainability, National land use plan, climate resilience, coastal zones, Institutional and legal framework, legal harmonization, and commission autonomy, compensation, and restitution.
Let me briefly just before I end my 5 minutes, just to give you a brief synopsis of what have led us to this.
We remember Gambia is one of the fifth most densely populated countries in Africa.
We don't have land, and our population is growing faster than any other population in Africa.
Therefore, it was timely for us to have a policy that would determine the management and usage of land in our country.
67% of all court cases in the Gambia are land related matters.
And therefore, it was important and timely for us to come up with a policy that would spell it out how we manage and use land.
And that became an issue not only for investors, even the government itself became seriously concerned.
As a result, we fell embarking on a land policy to create the necessary atmosphere for investors was very tangy.
Today, with the help of the World Bank, We are working on harmonizing our laws in line with the policy because the State Land Act, the fiscal planning and all other laws need to be amended to reflect the current realities of the land policy.
Because the policy dictates the strategy.
In the absence of a legal backup for the policy, then of course, the policy cannot be implemented.
And of course, as we speak right now, the World Bank is fully involved in the Gambia.
The digitalization system have started.
The study on the amendment of the laws have started, and all other legal framework, the castrl mapping, and a sample one have already started, and also issuing title to people to own.
Those who own land must have title to access resources in the banks.
That process also have started in a pilot form.
So we must, in this before I return the floor to the Mang, the Republic of Ghana, the Republic of Uganda, and Cerra Leon, these have been key countries where we have benchmark some of our new policy directives in the involvement of land management.
And indeed, we are grateful to the World Bank and all other partners who have supported us in trying to formulate this policy at this right time.
Thank you.
Thank you, Minister, for outlining some of the challenges you're having and of course, recognizing the importance of digital and harmonizing and I believe that Gambia will be part of those localizing the compact moving forward.
I will now move swiftly to Swatini and we all know that Swatii has been working to expand its housing finance ecosystem.
In terms of low income houses.
The question I want you to, if you can clearly articulate the instruments that are proven to work and where do you need partners as well to help you go forward.
So you can sit where you are and talk from there.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Moderator, and good afternoon to you Excellencies and distinguished delegates.
One of the most important things that I would like us to get from Satin is that we view the issue of housing through the lens of our system of governance, which we call ing Huna constituency level.
And this system of governance ensures that development is rooted in the grassroots consultation and ensuring that there is inclusive governance.
There are three realities that we face when it comes to the housing finance ecosystem.
One is that we have high access to formal financial services, but very low access to credit.
Only 12% of adults use the formal credit.
The second reality is that of the land tenure system.
We have one that is a Sini national land.
This is land that is overseen by our traditional leadership.
The good thing about it is that, every citizen has access to that land.
However, we are not able to utilize that land as a collateral in the financial sector.
Then there's freehold which can be used as a collateral.
There's very few of our citizens that have access to the freehold because of the pricing.
The third reality is that of a growing housing demand within the development corridor, the capital, as well as the middle of Eswatini, where there is a lot of development and land there mostly in the hands of freehold is very expensive.
But as a ministry or as government, we With the issue of, you know, the housing Compact, we have embedded this in our strategic imperative in our strategic plan 25 to 2030, which integrates affordable housing with environmental stewardship and economic inclusion.
So within the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, we have a Department of Housing and Human Settlements, which oversees urban planning, land administration, housing policy, ensuring that no one is left behind.
They are armed with the requisite, you know, legal and administrative instruments, even in terms of unlocking land parcels within the urban area for housing, you know, development.
With regard to the financing or financial situation in the country, we have a financial, a very stable financial sector, very stable but small.
Unfortunately, because of that, the lenders struggle a lot to offer long term low interest housing loans.
And this is an area where we see DFIs coming in to provide long term liquidity for affordable housing and catalyzing private investments.
We also have a very strong mobile money penetration of about 71% and a high informal financial inclusion of about 85%.
And we view this as very much ideal foundations for micro housing loans delivered through the MFIs and mobile channels.
However, there is need for the DFIs to come through and ensure that happens.
We also practice what we call incremental building.
Most of MS to do that.
Again, we do see that as an opportunity to harness that for better housing.
Now, our ask as I conclude, we are inviting global partners to come and join us to join Africa, but also to join SWATIE for two things.
One, to standardize bankable projects.
For example, we need partners for blended finance structures for affordable housing developers, harnessing green housing credit lines, as well as capital for micro housing lending.
Two, we invite partners to come in and assist in integrating land based solutions into national housing policies to ensure long term sustainability.
For example, in terms of land record digitization, community level tenure regularization, legal support for secure occupancy certificates as well as models for lending without full titling.
I believe that other, low income countries do face such challenges, and I hope I have spoken on their behalf too.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for for the call for DFIs to join you, but we do recognize, as you say, the market is stable, but small, which I think is something that we DFIs might be interested in understanding.
Secretary of State, Angola.
We do know Angola in terms of its large scale public housing program.
What we want to know what lessons from that experience are now shaping more bankable projects and the private sector.
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Thank you, Secretary of State, for giving us that experience, and I'm sure other ministers here might want to hear more, particularly how you support the young people in access to housing, helping them get on the housing ladder and the private sector involvement.
I will now talk to Your Excellency Salif.
Liberia has been a leader.
On inclusion public policy.
How is the government ensuring that women and importantly, young people are not only beneficiaries of affordable housing, but also developers and financiers? Well, good afternoon, Mr.
Moderator, to all of the distinguished dignitaries here present and to all of our partners, ladies and gentlemen, the Arrest Agenda for Inclusive Development is positioning housing not just as infrastructure, but as a catalyst for human capital development by linking modernization of housing with youth and women's empowerment, Liberia is reframing housing, the housing policy as an engine for employment, entrepreneurship, and financial inclusion.
Women empowerment Women are being positioned as financiers and developers, not just recipients of housing projects.
This strengthens gender equality and empowers women in all sorts of ways to participate in to participate in economic activities.
It also Encourages women to organize and finance community housing projects.
It is designed for safe, accessible, inclusive in urban areas that meet the needs of women and children.
Youth developers, we have programs that are linked for youth and one of the programs is the Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Program and the youth Investment Bank, which are designed for young librarians transition from passive beneficiaries into active developers.
This means architects, engineers, and entrepreneurs can directly ship the housing sector.
The Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Bank was launched in July 2025 with African Development Bank support and is a cornerstone of its strategy.
It tackles systematic barriers by offering financial access, seed funding, growth capital and early stage investments, risk mitigation, credit guarantees to reduce collateral burdens, technical assistance, business development services, monetary and managerial training, boost investment readiness.
Housing for Liberian women and the youth is not just a place where people can go and lie down and relax.
It's a dignity issue.
It helps our people realize their full potential, and our government under the arrest agenda is not leaving any stones unturned.
It creates revenue expansion, formalized housing and property registration, provides predictable property tax streams, enabling municipalities to fund infrastructure, schools, and sanitation, community stability.
It secure housing encourages long term residency, which boosts civic participation in elections, forums, and local decision making.
Data driven planning.
Structured housing developments allow municipalities to map demographics accurately, improving delivery of health care, security, and waste management.
The Act that established the Ministry of Local Government, as you're aware, we used to be called the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but the Local Government Act of 2018 established the Ministry of local government.
So we are now the Ministry of local government.
The Ministry of local government was established in was established in September 2025 by the Act of the legislature, it quotes, An Act to repeal Chapter 25, Ministry of Internal Affairs Title 12, Executive Law of 1972, Liberian Code of Law revised to establish it, instead, a new Chapter 25 to be known as the Ministry of Local Government.
Therefore, the Ministry of Local Government has now decentralized our country.
We are taking government to our people.
Women are leading this course, and as you can see, I'm the Urban minister and we are taking our government to our people.
Women for our president Joseph Numa Waki, every entity, every ministry is a woman to her counterpart, the men because women can bear babies, they can be educated, they can become housewives, they can wear high heels, and they can still rock the world.
Thank you.
Thank you, Jud Sicily for really outling the position of women and young people.
And particularly for me interestingly the youth Bank.
I think some of the housing especialist should bear that in mind.
That is another way of bringing back experiences from the ground into the compact, we believe, and seeing the lessons you've done, particularly putting housing at the center of human development.
We all know and understand the youth population in the continent and in Liberia that would be a way of changing livelihood and society.
Thank you very much for sharing those thoughts with us.
I will now turn to Secretary-General Yusuf Hussein.
Morocco housing program are widely regarded as a continental reference point.
What policy or instrument or mechanism, particularly in terms of innovation that you can share with us here today so that all the ministers can get to feel and experience your experience and how they can learn from it.
Over to you.
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Thank you, Secretary of State, for really outlining those pillars, and I hope I guess in the next one, we will push the 40% to 50 or 60% for women.
I will move now to Ambassador Nkitia Bossi, Kenya's affordable housing program is one of the most ambitious delivery efforts in the continent.
We've had some other examples.
What lessons from its first phase could you really share with us on financing? Take the delivery speed that you've managed to achieve so that other members or other ministers and member states can start to think of how will that work for them.
Over to you.
Thank you very much and on the onset, I would like to thank you and thank you and habitat for convening this important forum to discuss adequate and affordable housing.
Having listened to the rest of the panelists, it looks like as countries in Africa, we have similar problems and we seem to tail our solutions in the same way.
But Kenya has a unique design in which it has fashioned its housing program.
It is unique in the sense that it has not just been fashioned as a housing program, it has been fashioned a socio economic development program where each and every citizen is involved in the housing program.
So the success of this program has or largely leverages on about four or five pillars.
The first pillar is on the legal framework that has been provided.
The Constitution of Kenya guarantees every citizen adequate and affordable housing.
So as a citizen, then you are guaranteed to adequate and affordable housing.
And to operationalize that article 0F the Constitution, we have a national housing policy that came into being in 2016, that then operationalizes that article.
And beyond the National Housing policy of 2016, we have the Adequate and Affordable Housing Act of 2024 that then ensures that housing is anchored in the socioeconomic development of the country.
Pillar number one or lesson number one is having a strong legal framework on which to operationalize housing.
The second pillar is on sustainable financing.
What Kenya has done, it realized that national budgets alone cannot sustainably deliver housing.
We have a housing gap of about 250,000 units per year.
The national budget alone, besides the other pressing needs of government cannot then support housing fully.
In the Affordable Housing Act, there was a levy that was introduced, which is the affordable housing Levy where each and every Kenyan on salary is required to pay 1.5% of their income.
To the housing levy and the employer will match the same income with another 1.5%.
This is put together in a fund, and it is those resources that then are used to do the National Housing Program.
Lesson number three is a public private partnership.
That the government alone cannot deliver houses.
So it has partnered with the private organizations.
It has partnered with the financial institutions to deliver on this.
So what government does is to provide infrastructure, to provide land, to provide services, water, sewage, then that enables private partners to come in and support the development of housing.
Lesson number four, then would be the sustainable financing system for the homeowners.
It's another thing to do the houses, but you could end up with the unoccupied houses.
You'd end up doing houses that they are not bought.
What Kenya has done, it has collaborated with the Kenya mortgage refinancing institution.
That then provides capital to banks, to circles long term and at low interest so that then the banks and the circles are able to provide low interest loans to the citizen to be able to buy the houses.
I think there we have some similarity.
I believe it was it Angola that spoke about the market segmentation, where Kenya has done the social houses, it has done affordable houses and market rate houses, and that just takes care of the different income income levels of the citizen.
It sounds easy with a full lessons, but it's not as easy as I have put it.
All this relies on a very strong political goodwill.
Even now as we speak, our president was here two days ago.
He delivered an opening statement at the World Urban Forum, but today this evening, he is in one of the cities called Mombasa, to give keys to homeowners.
That is what strong political leadership and commitment looks like, that whenever he turns, he speaks about housing.
Equally, our minister is not here and maybe for good reason that I could get an opportunity to sit here.
She has had to be part of the President Trude and this is now a national conversation.
If you visit Kenya and we were privileged to host the African Urban Forum a month ago, Every place in Kenya is a construction site.
Houses are coming up.
That is the Kenyan lesson in brief, but it has to have a very strong political commitment to it.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ambassador, for articulating the four pillars and emphasizing the complexity in delivering housing, particularly that are affordable.
Excellency all, thank you for for expressing or sharing your experiences of what I have heard from each of you is a clear message.
Of course, the political mandate is also seemingly clear and we need to look at reform.
We need to look at how do we engage financing partners, but importantly, how do we ensure dignity for all and housing for all.
The compacts role is to hold the architecture together the fellowship, the data, the data platform, the Country Compact so that the work you have described is delivered.
Honorable panel members, ministers, thank you for the leadership and for me for bringing the agenda, sharing your experiences and coming.
I will take it what I've had today.
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Thank you for all your expression.
We all welcome.
A round of applause for them.
At this point, I'll pass you to the master moderator if you'd like to take a picture, please.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you to our distinguished ministers and Excellencies for that exchange and thank you for moderating the session as well.
If I could Now, please stay seated as we move on.
What I heard from ministers is a continent making inclusion practical, not as rhetoric, but as housing finance instruments designed for lower income households, as women and young people positioned as developers and financiers, as bankable models built on partnership.
The next question follows naturally, are the projects ready to receive the capital those partnerships require? Now we're moving on to our deal room.
This puts Readiness question to the test.
Investment ready projects curated through the Shelter Afri Deal platform in coordination with UN Habitat brought directly into engagement with the financing community in this room.
To convene this segment, please welcome the group head of Fund Management at Shelter Afr Development Bank, Vima Thuron.
Oh, you're dropping.
So thank you very much.
I think the second part of this session is how we can move and it's really important to have policy and government involved and but how we can move now from policy to implementation.
This session is really designed to demonstrate how the commitment under the Africa Union Forum Declaration can translate into concrete, lable, and bankable opportunities.
So we have today four projects to present to you.
Two will be online and two will be on site.
I'll call my project, Mr.
John Bauer, managing director of the State House Company from Ghana.
There will be two other projects because we have tried to go through the different geographies.
There would be one project from Mozambique, a municipality, there would be another.
There would be another project from Senegal and the last project that will be coming, he's running a little bit late because he's in another session is an award winning project from Randa ADHI.
I'll now kick start the session with Mr.
John Bani.
Can you do the presentation and tell us about your project? Great.
Thank you very much, Va.
My name is John Bauer, State House and Company Limited, from Ghana, West Africa.
Thank you very much to you and habitat.
I say hello to everybody here, and I'm here to share with you what we call the Green City Project in the second largest city in Ghana.
This project was recently launched by His Excellency, our President John Ramani Mahama.
And it's looking to deliver urban housing solutions to our ever growing urban centers.
So thank you very much.
So just to summarize what I'm about to share here today, State Housing Company is affectionately called SHC is presenting a bankable project seeking 35 million USD to deliver 1067 housing units.
Ghana is currently experiencing a housing deficit of about 1.8 million units.
The project is very bankable in that it's looking to deliver 25-35% return over a 60 month period.
Just to give you a bit of background on the housing situation in the country, as I mentioned, 1.8 million housing unit deficit growing 70,000 annually.
We have a population of about 35 million in the country.
58% of that population live in the urban centers currently.
Our three largest cities Acre Kumasi Takuti, and day in day out, you have young people moving from the other areas of the country looking for economic opportunities in these three urban areas.
Unfortunately, over 60% of these residents cannot afford market rate housing, which increases the demand for high quality affordable alternatives.
Um, so what is the market opportunity for investors in this room? We have a very large unmet demand for truly affordable housing.
I always add truly affordable because one of the most abused terms in real estate development around Africa is affordable and being able to figure out what affordable really means.
Are you looking at the location? Are you looking at the type of housing, or are you looking at the buyer? We have a very low mortgage penetration as well in the market, which I think a few of the speakers talked about long term financing.
So there's an opportunity in that area.
We have a very strong PPP framework which supports housing delivery.
And we have a very large population of Ghanians living in diaspora who are looking to invest in the real estate market back home.
I think I learned something very interesting about Azerbijan is that I remember about 40 million of its population live in Iraq.
Or is it Iran? One of the Iraq, right, rather than the 10 million that live here.
So we have a similar situation, maybe not numbers as large as this, but a lot of Ghanians outside of the country looking to invest back home in the property market.
This just gives you a small view of what the segmentation looks like in Ghana.
So rental market, social housing, affordable housing, which is the tricky one, middle income housing, then you go up from there.
The state Housing Company, which is a state owned developer, focuses on the affordable housing and middle income housing segment.
Social housing, it's great, and we have a lot of policy intervention because social housing can only be successful when you have strong and direct government intervention in the housing delivery.
State Housing Company Limited started as the construction arm of the government of Ghana's all the way from 1956.
Incidentally, the company is 70-years-old today and is the single largest unit in terms of housing delivery over the years.
We have over 30,000 housing units that have been delivered in the lifetime of the company.
It's 100% owned by the government of Ghana, and it's one of the more well managed SOEs within the government owned entities in the country.
And our mandate has always been to deliver affordable quality housing for all Ghanians with a special focus on civil and public service workers.
John.
Of the interest of time, I would just ask you because there are investors in the room.
What is the ask? Because I've heard that you see 25 to 30% return over 16 months.
That is a huge.
How are you risking it? What are you looking and what will be the impact so that you can wrap up and then we can continue the conversation.
I'll go directly to the project.
The project itself, 200 acres of land, which is unencumbered, secure titled land.
We have strong offtake agreements not only with unions, but also with pension funds that are ready to sign off take agreements on the project.
We're looking to deliver 1067 units in total.
Total project costs including infrastructure, 65 million USD estimate, different types of housing models, both regular brick and mortar type housing, and also eco housing, which is made out of compressed F bricks.
And like I said, the location is very close to the largest city, second largest city in the country, and majority of people that work in the city lack housing.
And so In terms of bankability of the project, it's ready to go.
The demand is high.
We are ready to lead that project.
How we there it is being a government owned company, all of the land we provide is secured by the government.
There is no litigation on any of our land.
And as you know, in real estate, you have land, you have offtake.
Those are the two biggest risk factors that you have in real estate.
And so we have a very, very bankable project which we invite you to join us to invest in.
And as you saw what Vimala said, the returns are very strong.
You don't find returns like that across the world in real estate.
You're looking at 10%, 12% on average.
So we have different financial models that we're offering.
We're offering blended finance approach.
We're looking for investors that are going to participate either in equity or debt, And also, we're looking for a lot of technical advisory services to help us ensure that the sustainable objectives that we're looking for in this project are realized.
And as I mentioned before, we have a very strong exit strategy for investors, being that we have strong uptake, strong demand.
Our government is recently launching a home ownership fund, which will hold around $300 million, which is going to help teachers, civil servants, public servants be able to access long term mortgage financing to pay for these housing.
That makes it a very strong project ready for investment.
The project itself aligns to our sustainable cities objectives, aligned to our poverty objective, and also infrastructure and innovation in terms of how we are bringing down costs of construction to ensure that people can afford the housing that we deliver.
In terms of the risk factors, as I mentioned, as you know, in Africa, forest volatility is always an issue.
However, we expect that with fast track completion, reducing the exposure to, you know, economic shocks, that should be able to mitigate that cost overruns is low.
Timeline delays is very low because we have a very strong team that has a track record for delivering on projects.
Otake risk is very low because we've signed offtake agreements with a lot of different unions and associations in the country.
The biggest challenge we have is the buyer financing, and I think a few panelists mentioned that as well.
However, as I made reference earlier, aside what the government itself is doing to enable people to access long term funding, we Estate Housing Company Limited, have agreements signed with two of the major banks that provide mortgages in the country, and the agreement allows them to provide preferential rates lower than the market rate for people that buy properties from us.
So this is our ask and we're ready for partners to join us to deliver on Ghana's housing future.
Thank you very much for the project.
Thank you very much, John.
Round of applause to John.
And then just to recap the project is 65 million project total project, where government is coming with the land and you are looking for investors.
I still looking at this return.
So any investor in the room, you can reach out to John and have more deeper question.
I appreciate the mitigation of FX because I think this is something that is really important.
The macroeconomy are not very favorable, but at least it's a stable country, Ghana.
Absolutely.
We really appreciate that also the capital market is very resilient, so this is also something that we can uptake.
Thank you very much, John.
Thank you.
I'll be here all afternoon.
So John, you can come to see if there are question after.
Now up.
We have an award winning project, ADHI, Hassan Aden Hassan from Jazira Coastal Development Initiative that is going to present the project.
Can you put the video behind and Hassan will just go through the project.
You have four minute and a half, Hassan.
Ha.
So 4.5 minutes.
Good afternoon, everyone.
My name is Hasan.
We are I'm the SEO of ADI Africa Holdings Limited.
We are a vertically integrated affordable housing Affordable Housing platform headquarters in Kigali with operations across Rwanda, Uganda, Somalia, and we're breaking into Dibouti as well.
So what you are currently seeing there now is the project that we have developed in 2021 in Kigali and that was phase one during construction, and now we are actually currently doing phase two.
So three things that you should know about us before we go into the project first, We are not your typical developers with a contractor's hat.
We own a full stack manufacturing, construction, development, and that creates the whole value chain and that's why we are able to provide really, really affordable housing.
But we need to have investors who can understand us as well at the same time.
Secondly, the way that we develop our project is not your typical bricks and mortar.
We try to innovate as well.
So we have a whole R&D department that delivers innovations that drives innovations into the constructions itself as well.
And that construction technology, it's patented in the US, as well as Ari ORP across the African countries as well, about 55 countries.
That first project that you are seeing there now has actually been awarded the IFC Advanced Edge certificate.
So that kind of tells you that in a couple of years time is net zero ready.
So the other projects that we are seeking funding is phase two that you are currently seeing, the mockup.
It has different typologies, and it has also commercials just like phase one.
So thirdly, still talking about us as ADSI We are some of our partners are already locked in, just like Shelter Afriq they are actually part of the process, and during their AGM meeting in Kigali 2024, they actually came and launched with us phase two.
So What we are basically bar, which is phase one and phase two.
There are also three other phases.
The whole projects makes up 30 hectas subdivided into five phases bite sizes because we are able to deliver projects in the manageable sizes.
In total, we are going to deliver 2,280 units, and that's going to be across the next seven, eight years.
Investors in here, if you are willing to come with us, this is for the long haul, it's not just one shot, and this is going to be a revolving fund that you are going to be making your return on your investment as well at the same time.
So Phase two consists of 516 residential units, 65 commercial unit, a community center on seven hectres.
So the total built area on the seven hectres it's roughly about 47 square meters of built area.
The total cost of the project is 28.5.
The total selling price is 33.4.
That gives you roughly a return on investment of about 25.3%.
However, Because we have actually delivered a advanced edge project, there is a way that we can actually try to raise some funds as well through the carbon revenue as well as climate financing because we are able to sit down with them in that front.
Design is complete, expropriation is closing out and because we have delivered phase one and we have that reputational now, phase two, 60% of that has been bought off plan.
So we have already secured 10-20% deposit.
So in a nutshell, as ADSI, we are going to put in 10.4% to have a skin in the game as a first loss equity.
Buyers are going to put in 23.4, which roughly makes that total around 34% and that's your capital D risk before the senior debt enters.
That gives you an idea already that we have got the credible reputations.
Now, We can deliver the external infrastructure, the bulk infrastructure is not within the internal, the external, the roads, electricity and water, and Internet is already at the perimeter of the projects.
Us, all we have to do is now bring it in within the development itself.
So what we are also looking for, we cannot be delivering projects business as usual.
We have to see how we can create a community which is climate resilience as well as we have to adapt to the ever changing climate.
So We are also talking to the climate funds to see how we can actually raise from there.
Climate fund, carbon credit, our DFIs are here, so the ask is quite simple.
This project is going to deliver almost 75% affordable and 33% that falls outside of the affordability.
Africa, global South has almost 53 million deficit in housing.
Nigeria, I've just learned actually this afternoon while I was on the panel on something in the region of 18 million, 27, 20 million.
Just think about it, 53 million, but that's on the lower side.
That's a very conservative.
On the higher side, that gives you a project size.
If you even do it at 30,000 per unit, 1.5 trillion.
There is money in there, but it's how we deliver responsibly as well at the same time.
In a nutshell, the ask is quite straightforward.
We are not asking the whole 28 million, we are asking 18.9 million and that will be structured in a blended senior debt.
To close phase two.
We've also got the the LOI from Shelter Africa.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Asana.
I think with climate change, it's really important to build a climate resilience.
The phase two look absolutely amazing.
You have also the inclusiveness.
What I like is that the community because if we are building house, but we are not building a whole ecosystem and school and a community around, it's not viable.
So if there are investor in the room that would be that want more information, you can have a talk with Hasan just after.
I think now we have two presentation that is online.
Senegal is waiting and then there's another one from Mozambique.
So Ibragim, will you be speaking French? Can we have connection with Senegal? It's a project from the government actually.
I let everyone have their translator, headphone.
I Eco Can you hear us? Yeah.
Okay.
Okay.
To you for a half minutes, please.
Ibragm, can you hear us? We can't hear you clearly.
We can see you.
Shall we move on to the next participant? Let's him p 2 minutes and then we can or maybe we can have Mozambique up and then by the time we fix any Internet issue.
Sure.
Maybe we can put Mozambique.
It looks like.
Is his Honorable Albano Car online and ready to present from Mozambique? Okay.
Are you going to speak Portuguese or English? English.
Okay.
Perfect.
The floor is yours.
Thank you very much.
Okay.
Thank you.
Intervention from Mozambique.
The second large Can you cut your video, please? Maybe there is connection issue and we put the presentation on also.
I don't know how in COVID we used to do that.
It's very difficult now.
This is Senegal, the presentation that you're showcasing on the screen.
The other one is from Mozambique, please.
We might have to cut it off there because of time.
We don't seem to have a healthy connection with these two panelists.
So we'll just wrap up the panel.
We can wrap it up.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
So I'll just give the floor to you to wrap up.
Thank you.
So our deal room puts the readiness question to the test.
Investment ready projects curated through the Shelter AfrDal platform in coordination with UN Habitat brought directly into engagement with the financing community in this room to convene Sorry, that was our last present.
That was we just finished with you Va, right? Sorry, say that again.
I'm moving on now.
I was reintroducing you, sorry.
Thank you to Varma and thank you to each of our project sponsors.
What we've just seen is the breadth of what investment ready now means in African housing and urban delivery from a national housing fund operating at a sovereign scale to a private developer building affordable stock to a municipal level proposition in a fast growing secondary city.
The pipeline is not coming, it is here.
So it raises the question that closes this session.
What does it take on the capital side to meet that pipeline at scale? Not pilot tickets, institutional flows, not one off transactions, but portfolios to lead that conversation with four senior leaders from across the capital stack, please welcome one of the continent's most authoritative voices on African Housing Finance, the CEO of the Center for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa, Keisha Rust.
Sure.
You can take a picture.
Well done.
We didn't have to.
I know.
I Hello everybody.
What a day it's been.
A number of us have been running from one part of the campus to another and back again.
In the course of it all, I think we've learned so much.
I'm really looking forward to this panel.
A C Sue panel, capital capability and market confidence and why the African housing market is the next strategic frontier, which indeed it is.
That's not just words.
Um, and I think you've seen that actually over the course of these last few days, the kinds of examples that are coming from the African continent are truly astonishing.
And thank goodness actually for that because the level of demand that's being expressed by people literally a queue of people walking into every city with urbanization rates that have been seen nowhere else on the planet at this degree.
There is a desperate need for investment in affordable housing, a desperate need for the housing to be built, to be maintained, for it to be financed, and we're all feeling the pressure So I'd like to invite my panel forward, and I think that what's so nice about how this whole discussion went in this room towards the Africa Compact is that we've had the expression by the ministers and by senior government officials talking about what's important to them and how they're really embracing affordable housing, and they're embracing it both as part of their social strategy and also as part of their economic strategy.
To achieve economic growth in the context of very troubling times and where our economies are under terrible stress, everybody needs a house.
That's an opportunity that is being recognized at the government level.
Then we had the deal room and we can see that there are projects that developers that are taking risk that are putting their own skin into the game, as it was said, and who are seeking to deliver no longer just for the high end market, but they can see that the bulk of the market is actually in the affordable segment.
And they are innovating in a way to meet both the needs and the limitations of that segment.
I find that very exciting because we can see that there is a responsiveness and a creativity among the private sector to actually engage with this segment of the market.
Now we're going to have this conversation.
Vima, I need to invite you back up again.
Please come up.
Vima is the director of the fund management group from Shelter Afrique Development Bank.
I will manage.
You choose your favorite spot.
Vima has been very busy today and this week and in fact, for the entire year, Shelf Development Bank doing excellent work in driving investment into affordable housing.
I think also quite critically, and this is your role is crowding in other investors to join you because you need a lot of money.
So that's Vima.
Then we have Alicia Hill, who is the Vice President, Impact Investing Federal Capital Partners from the United States.
Welcome.
Um, Ahmed Baba from Family Homes Funds Limited, special technical assistant to the CEO, please come and join us.
Family Homes Fund is in Nigeria and they've been doing also really interesting work in terms of, in fact, driving all of the pieces together.
They're choreographing that with a series of funds that they're managing and relations the relationships between government and the private sector that they're facilitating to realize affordability.
Finally, Olivia Nielsen, the principal with Miammoto International, Olivia and I play tag team sometimes.
Olivia spends a lot of time all over the world as it happens, advising governments on ways in which to engage into affordable housing and how to structure their private sectors, finance, delivery, and so on into an efficient way that achieves the outputs of affordable housing delivery.
Colleagues, welcome.
Thank you very much for being here late on a Thursday afternoon and thank you to all of you.
I am hoping that we have 30 minutes, so to talk at 1.5 speed.
I don't know if we're going to manage questions, but let me just offer you the opportunity to capture them afterwards because I'm sure you'll have questions and then we'll see what we can do at the very end.
Vima, I'd like to start with you actually, because you've just showcased two of the four projects that you brought here.
I'd really like to know you as Shelter Development Bank, you're ready to fund these projects and you have others in your pipeline and so on, but you can't do it alone.
So what is it that you need to make those projects happen and what are you looking for from this room? Thank you very much, Kia.
I would like to thank Kia and UN Habitat for putting this panel up, actually this whole session.
The deal room was also created with partners like Kasia, UN Habitat, and other partners to make a platform to bring bankable projects to meet investor.
Yes, Shelter Afriq is a development bank.
And by a DFI, we don't usually take that much risk.
What we have seen, there is a lot of capital on the continent.
There is a lot of projects, but we need to structure projects to do them.
This is exactly what is needed.
We need to scale projects because very often projects are small.
Instead of going from a project approach, go from a transaction approach.
We need also to look at the FX volatility because local currency costs a lot and we need also to have a blended finance structure.
We have different mechanisms such as guarantee, such as different partners around the table, philanthropics, DFIs so that we can crowd more private capital, such as pension fund.
What we need today is to move from project approach to more transaction approach.
We need to aggregate small projects of 1 million, 2 million so that we put them in a pot so that we can dis them more.
Actually, and we need to have partners around the table.
We need to have policymakers, we need to have people like Keesa and the CAF that is also around the table that provide data to us because these data also informs investors on the next strategy, on the country, on how it's not a question of not willing to invest, but how we can structure deals to direct them so that we can come and finance them.
I think this is what is needed.
Collaboration around the table, more different instrument and data and evidence and also for government to come and put those policies and reform so that we build a conducive environment for business.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Alicia, I feel like in the United States, you've had some experience in this and certainly the blended finance approach is something that's been explored for quite some time.
Also looking at portfolio level approaches of investment and so on.
So I wonder if you could just comment on that environment and how you've operated within the American context and maybe reflect a bit on what that might look like in this continent in the African continent.
Thank you.
Yes.
Thank you so much, Cassia.
It's such a pleasure to be here with this group.
I've just been really struck over the last couple of days, particularly for the sessions that have been around the opportunities in the continent of Africa on the common threads across the board.
I work in the United States, our affordable housing and workforce housing industry is in a different place in the cycle, but we have watched it mature and become much more institutionalized and professionalized over the last 30 plus years.
To your point, there's a lot of blended finance tools that have been utilized for some of our primary resources that we leverage for our work.
Um, just for context with respect to affordable housing in the US, the size of the US housing markets over 55 trillion in market cap.
Around 35% of all households are renters, but when you go to the city, that's significantly higher.
Our firm is based in Washington, DC.
If you look at the Washington, DC rental market, around 60% of households are renters.
If you look at the income level, the median income of a renter household squarely fits within that low and moderate income framework that we use in the context of housing.
With that in mind, we're seeing very significant cost burden.
We have a significant housing shortage.
It pales in comparison to the numbers that we've heard here today, we're really looking at around a 7 million unit shortage, but keep in mind that we have purpose built affordable rental housing that has very specific tax credit and blended finance tools through some government programs that were initiated in the late 80s and early 90s, where we still will not be able to catch up.
That's the primary tool that we have to use.
It's called the low income housing tax credit.
Even though it's approaching its 30 year term, the first of that cycle, since they are typically financed with that type of timeline, we still won't get to close that gap.
I think what's really relevant for the conversation here is in terms of what we're seeing that's working and the investment case that we make to our stakeholders is, this is a compelling investable opportunity.
If you strip away the social imperative, which is absolutely important, there's a strong case to be made and the metrics are not nearly as significant as what I've heard today.
The growth outlook on the continent of Africa, just being here the last couple of days and hearing 3.5 to 4% population growth annually.
Those are not typically metrics that we are seeing in the US market today.
What that means to me when I really listen around the table is There is a framework that goes between need versus the durability of demand and trying to connect those dots, I think is really important.
I know part of the question is really around is the impact enough? Is the need enough? What I would say is what really is helpful to the conversation and what really is helpful to this concept of de risking is really being able to articulate the proof points of the durability of demand in a manner that really is very market based and commercially feasible.
I think that's really important.
I would just highlight with that statement that When you have a significant number of units that are needed, whether they're for sale or home ownership or rental housing, What the market responds to is certainty and the risks that it can measure and rely on.
Having the need alone is extremely compelling, but being able to tie how that need syncs up with, where is the growth happening? What are those locations? I heard conversations earlier today around ensuring that you are developing communities in places where there's access to transit where folks can get to jobs in the CBD.
I'll leave it there, but I'll say that there are some very consistent themes.
We're always thinking about how policy is the connective tissue, but we also are trying to really understand When is it commercially feasible and how can we spell that out for our investor stakeholders and capital partners so that they can see through the volatility of just the industry and our business in our context? I would imagine that for a lot of the folks in this room, it's a very similar process and that was very clear in some of the projects that were presented a few minutes ago.
It's so funny to hear you talk about the durability of demand.
We're not so worried about the durability of demand.
I mean, I understand what you mean, but the durability of supply is something that we really do struggle with to keep the developers moving.
One last thought before we get to you, Ahmed, is just, I think you two should talk.
Absolutely.
I would just highlight when I say durability of demand, I'm talking about investible demand.
Yeah.
The need alone is not sufficient.
But is it in a place where, for example, shelter FRE can go based on what their framework is or other investors at the table? Yeah.
Okay.
Thank you.
Ahmed, would you like to talk about the durability of supply? Absolutely.
I think unlike the situation in America, our demand is structural and not cyclical.
It's generational.
It's here to stay because of the numbers, the numbers, Nigeria, the African housing deficit is 53 million or so.
Nigeria accounts for over 50% of that.
And so it's structural, it's generational.
It's again, cuts across the entire value chain sphere of housing, the ecosystem.
So from low income all the way to high income brackets.
So the demand is here, it's verifiable.
It's solid, it's structural, it's generational, absolutely.
Got it.
So how are you engaging with that on the supply side? And what are you pulling together? You've been working together with government and the private sector, and you've basically choreographed so many different relationships, public private partnerships.
How's that going? Is it working, and what are the gaps? Yes and no.
It's working because we've just like Shelter Afriq, we're deploying a structured blended approach towards financing, where we look at the portfolio and program, and we just don't look at projects.
So it's working in that way.
What's not working is the deficiency in capacity for developers, the ability to attract green finance, for example.
So there's a skill gap.
Developers.
There's also the absence of adequate housing solutions for the low income, say microfinance solutions.
So that market is more or less nonexistent in Nigeria.
So by and large, in six years of operations, we've successfully delivered 18,000 homes and family homes funds limited, yes.
And within the last two years, we've also funded the development of 12,800 student bed spaces.
So the traction is there.
We have the difficult mandate of solving the housing deficit of 28 million people.
So 28 million housing deficits, that's the population of an entire country, but that's just our housing deficits.
So yes and no.
It's working, but there are gaps, absolutely.
Can you tell me I don't know if you have this number, so forgive me for asking, but how many developers have been involved in the delivery of those? What did you say, 18,000 units? Yes.
So I don't have the numbers offered.
So typically, our approach will be for most of those homes, we went into a partnership with state governments.
The reason being to ensure that land comes at no cost, and also some predevelopment activities come at nominal cost like supporting infrastructure.
So typically, the state government would be the borrower, and they would nominate developers.
We have over 60 sites, locations.
Yes.
Some of those sites are repeats of same developer, but I would say, by and large, over 40 developers have been involved.
That's amazing.
Yes.
Now I want you and Varma to spend some time having a conversation because Vera keeps on talking about investable projects? If you've got developers that have experience, then you want to know them.
Of course, we're in talk with Shelter Africa costs.
You guys are already quite tight.
Okay.
Doctor Gambo is here as well.
I'm always in his ears.
So hopefully, I mean, family homes is the ideal sub national to partner with because we ensure end to end.
And so Shelter Africa, being a continental regional, we are on ground this experience, and we have all the boxes sticks so far, so All of the boxes too.
Thank you.
That's quite a thing.
I think I'm going to make a quick aside before I come to you just to say that part of the reason why they're so tight, the three here.
Alicia, you're going to have to come and join us in Lusaka, is because family homes funds, shelter could be a motor or all members of the African Union for Housing Finance, which is an industry body in Africa.
We have members of about 70 organizations, their banks and building societies and developers and professionals and so on, working across 23 countries and we're growing that membership.
But that creates quite a nice space for conversation.
The head of the Secretariat is here, T ed, Lamini just raise your hand, go talk to her afterwards.
We have a conference in November, Alisa, you really need to come because it's a wonderful place to carry on this conversation further in Lusaka, which is beautiful.
Olivia, You know much of this story because this is a lot of what you talk about with governments all over the world.
We talked about this a little bit earlier that what I really want you to talk about is we'll just reflect on this conversation and what does this mean? We're going to circle now back to there were ministers here at the beginning of the whole Africa Compact session.
How does that all tie together? What are the things that you're talking about with governments that relate to some of the opportunities and gaps that are being described here? So I want to start by saying, institutional investors built some of the most famous cities in the world.
New York, Manhattan was built by institutional investors, London, Singapore, why not Africa? Right? Why are we seeing that same level of excitement? If I had all the money in the world, I would invest in rental housing in African cities.
Because we were just talking about it.
I mean, African cities are going to grow and they're going to grow and what is going to happen to land prices? They're going to go up and up.
If you think they're high today, what are they going to be like in 20 years? If you think housing is hard to build in African cities today, it's going to be much harder in 20 years.
If I'm an institutional investor, investing in land, in long term land ownership in African cities, Oh, boy.
I think that's where it's at.
Why are we not seeing it quite happen? Why aren't we seeing African rental housing booming way it should be on paper, it should be booming.
I think it's maybe because we're not taking risk very seriously.
That's maybe what I'm seeing with a lot of pitch decks, sorry, with a lot of a lot of these proposals, we talk a lot about demand and I agree with you.
Yeah, the demand could be 1 trillion.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter what the demand is, as long as you have enough people who have the money who can live in those houses for the time you need it.
But also, if you're talking about rental, it's about being able to evict them if they don't pay.
It's about having the effective demand and having the institutions and the laws in place to be able to deal with those who don't pay.
The risk needs to be taken a lot more seriously for investors, and I think that's what scares them when they come to Africa.
If I have any advice for people putting together a pitch deck, is to spend a little more time on it.
My husband, he has a startup and he spent about six months putting together a pitch deck.
This is not an easy task.
It has to be perfect.
You only have 4.5 minutes to capture your audience.
That's not a lot of time.
Everybody knows that the demand is high.
We all know that Africa has a large housing deficit.
We all know that cities are growing, that demand is huge.
But what are you going to do about it in this specific project? How are you going to de risk the project? I think that's important because there are many types of risk.
Risk is not a single faceted thing, and this is why we need DFIs to come and de risk part of it.
We need banks to come.
We need everybody we can to start to de risk different parts of the project and you need to showcase that.
Maybe you need to have one slide per risk and show how you are addressing that specific type of risk.
Then I really think it's about long term commitments.
Institutional investors are looking for long term returns, right? And so African cities are where it's at.
It should be happening and I really want to see it happen.
Can I just offer something quickly on that.
This is where I think the US story in affordable housing is a good reference point on perhaps some lessons learned or some tactics that might be helpful.
To your point, institutional capital is absolutely what is going to support scale and being able to frame the risk adjusted opportunity using framework so that it's not just domestic institutional investors in the context of the continent of Africa, but also globally institutional investors that have appetite and interests.
Something that we have started to do in our industry is really pull out the data and articulate it in a way that folks can understand.
That means we can show you on a historical basis in the US that for rental housing specifically, specifically for households earning between 60% and 80% of AMI, we can show you that over a 25 year period, much higher occupancy than the more expensive properties, more NOI per unit, lower turnover.
If you look at it over the long term, I would agree certainly here with Ahmed as well, that I would argue that the US affordable housing market is secular and not cyclical.
The demand is there and if you look at that over a long term, it's less volatile.
There are ups and downs, but because the demand is so high, I can talk about a risk adjusted opportunity set.
I think I completely agree with Olivia.
I think there's such an opportunity with respect to the potential for rental housing on the continent of Africa that copy some of the frameworks in terms of how we're talking about it across the globe from different stakeholders.
I think that's very valuable because the common terminology is so useful and I heard it earlier during the pitch.
We have a real challenge with nomenclature in our business and I see that that's a global thing that everybody's thinking about.
Where you can map it to pattern recognition in other areas, I think is so useful.
I think it's awesome points made all around, but I completely agree in terms of the framing of the risk adjusted opportunity.
That's so helpful.
Thank you and really interesting because in fact, Vala, you're engaging now with investors and they're asking you things and you're having to answer them.
Tell us a little bit about that.
What are they asking you and how do you answer those questions in relation to what Olivia and Asia just said? I think as you have mentioned, there is a lot of investment opportunities.
There is a lot of opportunities out there, but we are also looking not at only affordable housing.
We are also looking lower down social housing also.
Shelty Africa has developed a calculator for affordable housing.
I think there was a question of what is affordable housing? What is affordable for Alan Musk may not be affordable for me.
We agree on that.
There are also the lessons learned.
We are having a partnership with Japan and India.
India today, they are doing 1 million housing unit to the informal sector.
And their NPL non performing loan is less than 3%.
Because what they are saying is that they are building platforms and when you are talking to those informal sector, our Bodda Boddha, our mama burgas, those people doesn't have a bank account, but they have digital footprint.
They have track record that can prove that they are paying, and those very specific segment of the market are people that know where $1 is coming.
So when they are committing to a roof or rent to own, they are using it.
So this is also something that we as a DFI DFI that is driving the affordable housing mandate for the AFDB that we are looking to go to other kind of put off segment, not only the middle class or the upper class, but also those informal settles, those informal job that need also housing and how we are going to address them.
So it's kind of how we are structuring, and again, it's not how you go to a project approach.
It's how you structure in a blended finance SPV those different investment opportunities so that you can deris them and how philanthropic that come and be that catalytic layer.
And let me tell you all if IDFi doesn't take risk.
This is a myth, we have to understand it, but how we can deris for them to come is very important.
This is how we are approaching at Shelter freak.
That's great.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We're right at the end of time, but Alicia threw me a ball and I'm going to quickly send it back to Ahmed for you to answer because Ahmed, if you've built 18,000 units, there's so much data in those units.
Are you doing anything about that? Sorry, could you call me.
Data collection and analysis of those units.
Yes.
And that experience? Tell us very quickly, you only have two sentences allowed.
Okay.
I mean, there's so much data being gathered from demographics, from gender, location, household incomes and all that.
Also, some of those housing units were outrightly sold and some are rented out.
So that data is also available.
What we've noticed with the rental market in Nigeria is about 80% of people living in rented homes are not willing to embark on a rent to own scheme and the houses they currently live in.
So there has to be supply of new homes that would attract them, that would encourage them to basically get on these schemes, the rent owned schemes and that.
So the data is there, even from the social impact because we're government owned and we're mandated to capture jobs created and all that.
So we're data driven, definitely.
There was two sentences with lots of commas.
Yes.
I'm going to come and talk to you about that because that's the work that we do and hopefully we can come and present some of the stories around the performance.
Thank you so much to this panel.
Thank you to all of you for joining us.
Thank you to the audience here for staying with us around this.
Enjoy your last day tomorrow and hope to see you at the next Wolf too.
Thanks.
Thank you to Kesa Ross, the CEO of the Center for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa for moderating the C Suit panel and thank you to all our speakers for their insights, advice, and contributions.
Another photo session.
Thank you.