Housing Challenges in African Cities:

In this brief article, I look at the housing sector in parallel to local experiences of housing and neighborhood self-building (autoconstruction) in Brazil and Tanzania. I argue that, despite significant differences, in both countries, low-income urban dwellers play a key role in the construction and maintenance of houses and neighborhoods that offer them shelter and livelihood protection. Often, the housing stock that low-income urban dwellers build, within and outside organized community initiatives, represents a significant, if not the most important, source of housing provision for the urban poor in both countries. A new set of questions and grounded analytical methodologies can help elevate these important community roles and highlight innovative approaches from the ground up.

Worldwide, there is a crisis of housing affordability that affects, disproportionally, the urban poor (Galster and Lee, 2021). Brazil and Tanzania are affected by such a crisis, which unfolds locally in contextual ways (Rolnik 2017, Izar and Limbumba 2021). Despite significant differences in geographic, historical, and economic contexts, as well as in relation to land tenure regimes, there are similarities between Brazil and Tanzania when considering (possible ways to achieve and/or increase) access by the urban poor to adequate and affordable housing. How can a comparative analysis help understand this issue? Moreover, how can grounded analysis of community-based housing production contribute to these understandings? These are the inquiries that this article addresses.

Land and housing prices are on the rise globally, while wages have stagnated (Madden and Marcuse, 2016; Wetzstein, 2017). De-regulation, fiscal austerity, and the privatization of public assets and services have disproportionately affected the urban poor in a negative way (Rolnik, 2017). As urban poverty increases and urban dwellers require more assistance from local and national authorities, governmental institutions limited in their technical and financial capacity by the outcomes of market-based policies and neoliberal ideology, fail to respond adequately to growing social needs (Gagster and Lee, 2021).

Housing supply and demand are elements of broader political economies of housing, where the political powers of property owners, public and private, are also of crucial importance (Ball, 1996). Currently, in a global scenario of growing integration between the commercial and residential real estate and the financial sectors, profit-seeking interests of development actors from outside local spheres can impact land use developments and property prices (Adalbert, 2008). Hence, research and practice concerned with housing affordability and innovation should investigate the nature, social and material outcomes, and everyday lived experiences of housing struggles, particularly in relation to the urban poor.

Research on housing innovations happening on the ground, particularly in the context of the Global South, can benefit from the comparison of distinct realities (Robinson, 2022). Brazil and Tanzania are different in size, location and development histories and conditions. However, in both countries, housing policy has favored the interests of profit-seeking developers, public and private, and dedicated more public resources to the finance and/ or construction of housing for the middle- and high-income classes than to the urban poor (Shimbun, 2010; Kirundi, 2015). Meanwhile, through different modalities of auto construction, low-income dwellers themselves have helped house the urban poor and avoid an even larger housing crisis (Pasternak and D’Ottaviano, 2014; Nguluma, 2003).

Tanzania and Brazil are characterized by different property systems. In Tanzania, land ownership is vested in the central authority, for the benefit of its citizens. Normatively, right of occupancy titles are granted to individuals and organizations, temporarily (Kironde, 2006). In practice, land management is characterized by overlapping land management systems (Kombe, 1995). The formal system, based on the issuance of right of occupancy titles, represents only 30% of urban development nationwide. Through informal systems, land is traded locally between individuals, with operations mediated by local authorities. Is it through the informal land system that most commercial and residential developments occur in Tanzania, particularly with regard to low income housing (Kombe, 2005).