Producing Affordable Housing in West Africa: How States Respond to Demand and Local Realities

A plan for 100,000 new homes in Senegal, a plan for 150,000 social housing units in Côte d’Ivoire, a plan for 40,000 dwellings in Burkina Faso, a plan to build 20,000 homes in Benin… Over the past decade, many West African countries have adopted national policies aimed at promoting the large-scale construction of what is termed “social” or “affordable” housing, [1] understood as housing that is accessible to households that cannot afford what is currently available on the market, and produced within a formal framework (buildings constructed in accordance with planning documents and delivered with a title deed), in order to alleviate housing shortages and improve inhabitants’ living conditions. However, these programs are encountering difficulties in achieving their objectives. They demonstrate the limitations of an urban development model that was designed without taking sufficient account of local needs and constraints, or the opportunities offered by the way in which West African cities are de facto constructed. This situation implicitly questions African urban imaginaries and provides an opportunity to consider models that are better suited to local realities (Chenal 2015). The arguments developed in this article are based on expert assessments and advisory missions carried out for West African governments to support them in the implementation of their national affordable housing programs, particularly in Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal.

The origins of national social-housing programs

In many West African countries, there is a disconnect between housing demand, which continues to grow due to population growth, and weak supply, which can be explained both by the withdrawal of governments from the development and construction sector and by the many obstacles limiting the construction capacity of private actors. Indeed, while many governments invested in urban development and housing production after independence, through state-owned companies such as SICAP in Senegal and SICOGI in Côte d’Ivoire, the structural adjustment plans adopted in the wake of the economic crisis of the 1980s led them to withdraw from the entire development and construction process in favor of the private sector (Biehler et al. 2015). Private actors, for their part, face difficulties in accessing land and financing, as well as a lack of technical capacity, which limits their ability to produce affordable housing in sufficient quantities to meet market needs.

For all these reasons, self-construction—a process whereby households build their own homes incrementally, on land that does not always have title deeds, and most often outside the planning and building regulations in force—is often the only solution for accessing housing. Although it has the merit of meeting vital needs, this process is accompanied by uncontrolled urban sprawl, often precarious housing conditions (lack of title deeds, non-compliance with urban planning documents and building standards, etc.), and very unequal access to urban services (water, electricity, sanitation, etc.).

The social or affordable housing policies adopted by states therefore aim to fill the housing gap, but also to regain control over the urban development process. In concrete terms, this translates into a set of measures aimed at stimulating supply through the low-cost sale of secure, serviced land to private developers who commit to building a minimum percentage of social housing. They also aim to make demand more solvent through measures designed to facilitate borrowing: refinancing by commercial banks, mobilization of state guarantees, etc. In fact, the interest rates charged by commercial banks are generally prohibitive, and banks are reluctant to issue mortgages due to the lack of guarantees offered by households (informal land titles, informal income, etc.). The measures put in place by governments are therefore aimed at reassuring banks so that they can lower their interest rates and relax their lending conditions.

These policies thus do away with the model governing the self-build process, which relies on the mobilization, either directly by individuals or through small private contractors, of day laborers [2] and artisans financed on a case-by-case basis through individual household savings or through tontine-type community savings and loan schemes, due to a lack of access to bank loans (Choplin 2020). [3]

In terms of urban planning, this translates into the artificialization of vast tracts of land often located several dozen kilometers from city centers (Figure 1). While this choice is primarily motivated by the high cost of land and the difficulty of finding large tracts of available land on the outskirts of large cities, it also conveys the dream of planned urban development and a peaceful living environment, breaking with the dysfunctions of the contemporary city.

Policies that struggle to hit their targets

Despite their importance on the political agenda, these programs are struggling to achieve their objectives. In most countries, the number of homes built to date falls far short of the stated quantitative targets. For example, in Côte d’Ivoire, only 5,000 homes were delivered by the government in 2019, compared to a stated target of 150,000 by 2020. In terms of quality, many projects suffer from a lack of functional diversity and a lack of public transport links, running the risk of losing their appeal over the years. The housing supply also appears to be out of step with the financial capacities of most households, with the majority of housing only accessible to the wealthiest households (the top two or three deciles), particularly those with regular incomes. Furthermore, it does not seem to meet the needs of the population, as completed homes on the market are quickly subjected to significant modifications by their occupants (extensions, rearrangements, etc.) (N’goran et al. 2020).

The new town of Bassinko in Burkina Faso is emblematic of these difficulties. Despite promising beginnings, this development, built 15 km from the center of Ouagadougou on a site covering more than 900 hectares, is hampered by a lack of public services, as the government struggles to make the investments needed to develop the site, as well as a lack of accessibility, with an undersized access road and no public transportation. In Côte d’Ivoire, the Songon-Kassemblé project, developed by the government on a 439-hectare site located 15 km west of Abidjan on the Abidjan-Dabou road, has also been significantly slowed down by the difficulties encountered by the government in “purging” [4] customary rights and carrying out infrastructure work (Figures 2 and 3). In both cases, developers were sometimes forced to abandon their projects because they were unable to complete the work and sell the homes within the expected time frame. Furthermore, the homes that were built are only accessible to the top three deciles of the population.

This situation can be explained by a number of difficulties encountered at all stages of the value chain:

• firstly, financial difficulties: the difficulty for governments to finance the acquisition and servicing of land due to a lack of resources, [5] difficulty for developers to borrow on acceptable terms on the markets, but also difficulty for households to take out loans despite the support measures put in place, due to low or informal incomes;

• organizational difficulties: lack of developers and lack of experience on the part of governments in managing large-scale urban projects, lack of capacity on the part of developers, who struggle to industrialize their processes and generate economies of scale;

• administrative and regulatory difficulties: lengthy and costly systems for registering title deeds and obtaining building permits, and significant risks of land disputes when purchasing land previously governed by customary law.

While solutions exist to overcome these difficulties—supporting the creation of developers, establishing mechanisms to capture land value gains and/or mobilizing parafiscal charges to finance site development, promoting the upskilling of developers, and developing local material production chains to optimize local construction costs, etc.—their implementation can only be achieved over time, and remains insufficient to meet the needs of the entire population, a large part of which remains excluded from bank loans, despite the support measures that have been put in place.

A necessary paradigm change

Enabling as many people as possible to access decent housing therefore requires diversifying approaches and devising complementary solutions inspired by practices in the informal economy. Self-build housing that does not comply with official standards is the dominant form of urban development in most African cities. Although this model has many weaknesses, it is currently the only one that allows households without access to banking services to spread their expenses over time and thus become homeowners. It also has the advantage of allowing for a certain degree of housing scalability, which is widely welcomed by households, and of relying on a multitude of small local entrepreneurs (small investors, construction companies, craftsmen, day laborers, etc.), rather than on a few developers often owned by foreign capital.

Thus, studies conducted in situ by the author show that states would benefit from capitalizing on the strengths of this model to accelerate the production of truly affordable housing, while addressing its weaknesses, namely informality, uneven construction quality, and lack of financing. This could be achieved by:

• supporting incremental self-build projects on land open to urbanization with land titles, and in accordance with standards defined jointly with the government (see the example of the Twize program in Mauritania, Allou et al. 2012 [6]);

• training local contractors in state-approved construction techniques and supporting the development of the production chains necessary for their large-scale deployment (equipment, materials, etc.);

*implementing financing mechanisms adapted to low and irregular incomes, inspired by current community savings and financing practices, such as revolving fund financing or granting loans to savings groups acting as intermediaries between households and banking institutions (see the example of the FSH housing project in Senegal, Chabot et al. 2018 [7]), refinancing microfinance institutions, or setting up incremental loans paid in installments as work progresses, as proposed by organizations such as iBuild Homeloans in South Africa or ZambiaHomeloans in Zambia.

Towards a hybridization of models

The issue of social housing thus illustrates the difficulty states have in devising solutions tailored to their socioeconomic realities and moving away from a formal city model largely influenced by an image of modernity that is far removed from the way their cities are built today.

While this observation holds true for housing, it also applies to developments carried out as part of national programs, which do not provide space for informal activities (street vendors, street shops, markets, small public transport, etc.), even though these activities are ubiquitous in African cities and constitute an essential source of income for a very large majority of people.

It therefore seems urgent to move beyond the formal/informal dichotomy and consider hybrid models in which public authorities would sometimes act as developers, or even producers, and sometimes as regulators, in order to better meet the needs of the population. It is this combination of public and private initiatives in the public interest that we believe will be the strength of African cities in the future.

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