Shelter Afrique reaffirms commitment to affordable housing

Shelter Afrique reaffirms commitment to affordable housing

Shelter Afrique, a pan-African finance institution exclusively supporting affordable housing, has restated its readiness to partner governments and institutions in line with its determination to plug housing deficit on the continent.

Speaking exclusively to Housing Development Advocacy Network, HDAN, in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, newly appointed Chief Executive Officer/Managing Director of the company, Thierno-Habib Hann, said “Development cannot happen without the housing sector”, which he said is the “enabler for development.” He further stated that shelter “is basically a minimum right for every individual to have access to a decent, affordable and sustainable housing.”

With regards to the Nigerian market, Mr. Hann said Nigeria is evidently central to the African market, stating that Shelter Afrique’s ability to align its priority in the market implies that the oragnisation certainly can scale its impact across the rest of the continent. The strategy for driving this objective, he said is called “V.I.R.A.L.”: vision, institutions, regulations, actors and local initiatives. V.I.R.A.L., for us, is the model for housing development in different countries. So, in Nigeria, this is what we are going to deploy”, he added.

Asked about the fate of a memorandum of understanding signed between Shelter Afrique and the Real Estate Development Association of Nigeria, REDAN, the MD said real estate development associations and organisations are the entry points for his company into different countries, stressing that strong partners and local players are central to his organisation’s vision for Africa. He promised that more of such partnerships will be established going forward.

Reacting to a meeting earlier held with the leadership of Shelter Afrique, Vice President of REDAN (North East), Husseini Abubakar, said his association looks forward to a robust and mutually rewarding partnership between both entities. “We have a programme called Rural-Urban Housing Initiative, RUHI-774, which is aimed at providing and constructing one hundred housing units in each of the seven hundred and seventy-four local government areas in Nigeria…to curtail urban and rural migration, to be able to provide jobs to the local communities”, he said.