From July 25th-28th, bigwigs in the housing sector from within and outside the country gathered at the International Conference Centre, Abuja for the largest housing and construction event show out of Nigeria, The 16th edition of the Africa International Housing Show (AIHS).
The event which focused on the theme: “HOUSING FOR ALL: The Role of Government in Creating an Effective Enabling Environment” provided a platform for stakeholders in the industry to dissect every topic within the theme and proffer solutions to the housing challenges currently facing the continent as a whole.
At the end of the event, stakeholders in the sector not only identified the challenges facing the industry such as affordable housing, housing deficit, housing financing etc but also brain stormed on practical and actionable solutions towards tackling these challenges.
According to the communiqué released at the end of the event, stakeholders agreed that the although the private sector has outperformed government and is championing the area of provision of housing in Africa, partnership between both the public and private sectors will mark a new dawn in the development of the sector.
The AIHS conference noted that the government should do more in not just making laws but follow up the implementation of relevant policies and actions that will drive the growth of the sector while also create enabling environment by ensuring necessary infrastructures like good roads, electricity, etc are in place to make housing for private sector investment.
As the housing deficit continue to climb, the need to scale up supply of housing units was also discussed.
Stakeholders agreed that improved supply can be achieved through finishing of ongoing projects, developing new land surveying/registration technologies which will expand access to titled land, increase domestic production of building materials to combat the issue of high cost of imported building materials.
As availability of finance remains a serious issue bedeviling the sector, the importance of taking into consideration the urgent need to promote the use of existing and new instruments in the market that can be used by developers, private sector participants, governments, and other stakeholders to raise and deploy capital into the housing sector was emphasied.
The need for alternative housing finance options was highlighted by speakers at the event as stakeholders in the housing industry were advised to take full advantage of capital market and non interest finance options such as SUKUK and Infra Credit that is now open to the sector.
The communiqué called on Pension Funds Administrators to play a part by using the capital markets to ease the challenges in the housing sector. They can increase their exposure to the housing value chain by allocating more resources to this sector in the form of equities, bonds, REITs, etc.
The communiqué also call for support of stakeholders toward the development of property technology noting that application of smart technology like Building Information Modeling (BIM), big data, artificial intelligence must be embraced to help in enhancing design precision and professional collaboration in managing human, capital, and material resources throughout the life cycle of a building, and hence promote effective construction project management and maintenance cost reduction.
