Housing The Poor On The African Continent

This book explores the circumstances surrounding state-provided, low-cost housing for people at the lower end of the housing market in Africa. It deploys Ubuntu philosophy to unpack the provision of housing security to citizens, arguing that interpreting housing rights within Ubuntu philosophy recognises the spirit of reciprocity and collective solidarity as fundamental to meeting the housing needs of low-income groups. In essence, the volume reflects on the values of Ubuntu and informs both policy and practice by guiding policymakers, researchers, and practitioners with the episteme of basic human rights and the Ubuntu philosophy. It pointedly grapples with issues that resonate with efforts by African governments to protect vulnerable citizens from multidimensional poverty, homelessness, gender-neutral policies, and self-help housing schemes. The book’s insights raise red flags concerning the realisation of Ubuntu as a vehicle earmarked to deliver adequate and sustainable housing delivery outcomes. The volume is a must-read for academics, researchers, practitioners, government officials, and leaders from various sectors.

This book explores the circumstances surrounding state-provided, low-cost housing for people at the lower end of the housing market in Africa. It deploys Ubuntu philosophy to unpack the provision of housing security to citizens, arguing that interpreting housing rights within Ubuntu philosophy recognises the spirit of reciprocity and collective solidarity as fundamental to meeting the housing needs of low-income groups. In essence, the volume reflects on the values of Ubuntu and informs both policy and practice by guiding policymakers, researchers, and practitioners with the episteme of basic human rights and the Ubuntu philosophy. It pointedly grapples with issues that resonate with efforts by African governments to protect vulnerable citizens from multidimensional poverty, homelessness, gender-neutral policies, and self-help housing schemes. The book's insights raise red flags concerning the realisation of Ubuntu as a vehicle earmarked to deliver adequate and sustainable housing delivery outcomes. The volume is a must-read for academics, researchers, practitioners, government officials, and leaders from various sectors.

Originally published in 1990, this book reveals the extent to which petty landlordism is developing not just in the African urban settlements that have sprung up but in government-sponsored low-cost housing estates. The first part of the book traces African governments' changing responses to urban growth since the 1960s. The second presents case studies of housing markets and landlord-tenant relations north and south of the Sahara. The third examines World Bank involvement, and the book ends by considering policy implications.

This open access book utilizes new data to thoroughly analyze the main factors currently shaping the African housing market. Some of these factors include the supply and demand for housing finance, land tenure security issues, construction cost conundrum, infrastructure provision, and low-cost housing alternatives. Through detailed analysis, the authors investigate the political economy surrounding the continent’s housing market and the constraints that behind-the-scenes policy makers need to address in their attempts to provide affordable housing for the majority in need. With Africa’s urban population growing rapidly, this study highlights how broad demographic shifts and rapid urbanization are placing enormous pressure on the limited infrastructure in many cities and stretching the economic and social fabric of municipalities to their breaking point. But beyond providing a snapshot of the present conditions of the African housing market, the book offers recommendations and actionable measures for policy makers and other stakeholders on how best to provide affordable housing and alleviate Africa’s housing deficit. This work will be of particular interest to practitioners, non-governmental organizations, private sector actors, students and researchers of economic policy, international development, and urban development.

This edited collection from across the African continent offers a diverse set of analytical accounts that engage with the urban governance dynamics, drivers and impacts of a wide variety of housing initiatives. These include insights into the relationships between parties and actors undertaking developments, or whose housing activities impact on the city. The book illustrates issues of power distribution, the visions or agendas motivating these actions, and the instruments used to advance them. It considers the rise of mega housing projects; private sector driven residential developments; unobtrusive transformations of existing building stock, establishment and upgrading of informal settlements; and state driven low cost housing schemes. It surfaces the contestation, collaborations and conflicts as well as the power relations that operate within cities and which are made visible on cityscapes. Housing and human settlement scholars as well as those interested in urban politics and governance dynamics in the global south and across the African continent will find much to appreciate in this volume.

Homelessness in Nigeria: Investigating Africas Housing Crisis, is a daring confrontation of a topic considered taboo in Africa. Equally daring is the nature and depth of information it provides through a holistic exploration of the subject of homelessness as it occurs in Africa and in the majority of the poor nations of the modern world. But Nigeria is a wealthy nation, given its vast human and natural resources. So, why has homelessness remained a challenge to this nation? How and when did homelessness become part of the Nigerian culture? Is there such a word as homelessness in any Nigerian or other African languages? Who and what has been generating this housing dilemma? What policy and practices are in place that perpetuate or attempt to address homelessness in the region? What are the housed- and homeless Nigerians views of this predicament? What is the predictable future of Nigerias homelessness quandary? These questions and more find responses in this book, as it explores the antecedents, the origins, and the current state of homelessness in that nation. To respond effectively to these numerous questions it examines the land use policy, housing and economic policy, past and present, as well as the history and status of housing codes, the building and rental laws in effect, comparing them with actual practices. This exercise exposes the significant roles of culture and emerging world view imports, as well as the direct roles of stakeholders, rulers and the ruled alike, in the dynamics of the homelessness scourge. In its quest for deep insights into homelessness, which spans over nine years of information search, I have drawn from a wide range of literary work. And, for the purposes of first hand information gathering on this poorly researched subject. I invested in inter-continental travels. Direct interactions with homeless and housed persons in the target location, as well as communication with Africans in the Diaspora has contributed even more comprehensive information on the underlying causes, nature and status of shelter poverty among Africans. There is a strong emphasizes in this book of the dominant roles of culture, religion and sectional politics in the creation and perpetuation of Africas homelessness and housing crises. And insights into this dynamic unveil answers to crucial, unanswered questions on homelessness in Africa as no known existing literature ever has. Meanwhile, in the guise of a tool of advocacy against homelessness and its accompanying stigma, this document is diametrically opposed to the shroud that mask the unconscionable injustice that is homelessness, particularly in communal-based, wealthy social environment, such as Nigeria. In these ways this work offers ample information to Africans and all stakeholders in the homelessness eradication struggle. Grassroot populations, policymakers, invested foreign non- profit agencies, and all stake holders alike, will find within these pages numerous significant facts on homelessness as it occurs in modern developing nations. They will equally discover viable suggestions for combating and addressing shelter loss. Homelessness in Nigeria is indeed a vital reference- as well as literary hand book for all who seek knowledge on African cultures, and, indeed, on cultures of the general Global South nations, and even more pointedly in matters of culture associated with housing. Professionals from all walks of life will thus find this a source of much insight in understanding regional diversity with regard to values relative to shelter deprivation.