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Compared with many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Ghana’s
urban population is very poorly housed. UN-Habitat report indicates that about
60 per cent of all urban households occupy single rooms. While a taxi-driver in
Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital, routinely lives in two or three rooms, one in Accra
is likely only to have one room.
The UN-Habitat report has suggested a total of 574,000
rooms must be provided every year, 1,840 per working day, about four every
minute to tackle the nation’s housing deficit of 1.7 million.
This is a significant challenge and one unlikely to be met
by formal sector contractors building two- to three-bedroom villas, even if
many of the households could afford them.
Business through the current formal housing, land and
finance institutions, will not meet the serious shortage of rooms and services
in urban Ghana in the next decade.
The UN-Habitat say the way forward involves major changes
in the way housing is provided; a paradigm shift from ensuring that a few very
well-constructed and serviced dwellings are provided to ensuring that enough
housing is built for everyone at a price that they can afford.
This certainly means shifting the emphasis from finding a
future for current housing supply institutions to installing processes that
ensure large quantities of housing at appropriate prices and sustainable
densities, chiefly to the benefit of the majority of households who live in poverty.
Currently government figures
show that 35 per cent of the households can only afford housing costing
GHC12,000 or less (a single room) and 85 per cent of all households can afford
less than GHC72,000.
Story: Samuel Mantey
Property Express
Email: Sammyoo3@yahoo.com
