Shelter Afrique has raised hope for investors in housing development as it designs a sovereign lending product to provide an alternative funding source for those projects. The product, according to the pan-African housing development financier, will be sold in the capital market.
Africa, particularly Nigeria, has a wide housing gap, and the capital available to bridge this gap is insufficient, informing the organisation’s decision to design this innovative product. Nigeria, for instance, has a very wide housing demand-supply gap estimated at 20 million units. Lack of capital is at the core of the causes of this deficit which seems insurmountable despite public and private sectors efforts.
In response to this continent-wide problem, Shelter Afrique revealed in a statement recently that it has conducted an in-house capacity building in partnership with the African Development Bank (AfDB) ahead of the launch of the product.
The statement explained that this product would supplement the institution’s traditional products that attend to both the demand and supply sides of the housing value chain. An official of the company, Kingsley Muwowo, noted that the contraction in Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP) from the Covid-19 pandemic was an alarming sign of a slump in the inclusive housing goals in many countries.
Shelter Afrique is the only pan-African finance institution that exclusively supports the development of the housing and real estate sector in Africa. It is a 44-member institution that includes Nigeria.
Recently, Nigeria as one of the most active member countries raised its stake in the company to 15.8 percent, though still behind the largest shareholder, Kenya, which controls 16.85 percent.
According to Modupe Gbadeyanka, a current affairs analyst, the relationship between Nigeria and Shelter Afrique has been growing in recent years, recalling that in September 2020, the institution received a $9.4 million additional capital subscription from Nigeria and recently, the country paid an additional $7.15 million to increase its holding to the current level.
