Partnership and financial innovation: unlocking affordable housing markets in urban Africa and Asia

By Andrew Jones, Lisa Stead and Lucy Livesley

The global housing challenge:  The escalating global housing crisis is one of humanity’s greatest challenges. At least 1.2 billion people worldwide live in substandard housing, often lacking access to basic services and infrastructure. This is increasing rapidly in the context of accelerating urban population growth, especially in rapidly urbanizing Africa and Asia.1 The World Bank estimates that 300 million new homes will be required by 2030 to bridge the global deficit, with the majority of this need concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia. This will require a global investment of $17 trillion to facilitate land acquisition and housing construction – representing a huge untapped market for the private sector.

While the challenge is vast, the opportunity is enormous. Delivering quality, serviced, and genuinely affordable housing at scale in Africa and Asia has the potential to achieve transformative positive impacts on the lives of billions of people in the lower-end of the income pyramid, while driving economic growth, financial inclusion, urban resilience, and climate change mitigation. In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic and worldwide lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, the centrality of housing to sustainable development has never been more evident.