Urban infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa

Harnessing land values, housing and transport

Presented by Sylvia Croese

21 July 2015

The housing challenge in Sub-Saharan Africa: approaches, challenges and opportunities

Characteristics of the housing challenge

• Rapid urbanisation

• Sustained poverty

• Effects of displacement

• Most housing is informal housing

Source: World Urbanisation Prospects: 2011 revision. United Nations

Housing policy trends Time Approach Who Main publications

1950-1960s Public housing and slum clearance State

1970-1980s Sites-and-services and upgrading People World Bank (1974) Sites and services

projects.

UN-Habitat (1976) ‘The Vancouver

Declaration on Human Settlements’.

1980s-1990s Enabling approach

from ‘supply to ‘support’ policies

Private UN-Habitat (1986) Global Report on

Human Settlements

UNDP (1991) Cities, Poverty and People:

urban development cooperation for the

1990s.

UN-Habitat (1990) The Global Strategy

for Shelter to the Year 2000

World Bank (1993) Housing: enabling

markets to work.

UN-Habitat (1996) ‘The Istanbul

Declaration on Human Settlements’.

Cities Alliance (1999) Cities without Slums

action plan

2000s-current Differentiated approach

global support policies vs local

supply practices

Mix Millennium Development Goals (2000)

UN-Habitat (2003a) Global Report on

Human Settlements: The Challenge of

Slums

UN-Habitat (2005) Financing urban

shelter. Global report on human

settlements.

Examples

• Angola’s National Urbanism and Housing Programme (2009), Namibia’s National Mass Housing Programme (2013), Ethiopia’s Integrated Housing Development Programme (2005), South Africa’s National Outcomes and ‘mega-projects’ approach (2010; 2015)

• Also: plans for ‘new cities’ (eg. Kenya)

Seen as resolving the problem of scale

Seen as more cost-effective (?), easily implementable

Role of external (f) actors (eg. China)

However, problem of affordability (and sustainability)

Housing finance

“Adequate shelter which is built formally is unaffordable,

informally built housing is affordable but inadequate” (UN-Habitat, 2005) in SSA less than 15% of people are eligible for

mortgage financing (Rust, 2007).

Gap between what is built and financed by state and what is

built and financed by people

Increasingly filled by micro-finance (non-regulated vs

regulated), although constrained by housing delivery

environment

Opportunities

Recognizing ‘invisible’ housing investments at different

stages of the house building process (housing value

chain) and multi-dimensional value of housing (financial,

economic, social)

however, value creation also creates barriers and

opportunities for rent-seeking

Opportunities

Instruments for value capture and re-distribution:

• Regulation or collaboration so as to enable/facilitate the

appropriate transfer of value to households

• The use of land value captured from middle to high income

residential developments and commercial property to provide infrastructure both for the areas where it is raised and

for infrastructure serving low income housing developments

Low income housing as a beneficiary of land value capture

Thank you

Urban infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa – harnessing land

values, housing and transport