Solving Africa’s Housing Deficit

This transcript is from a CSIS podcast published on May 22, 2025. Listen to the podcast here.

Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Welcome to Into Africa. My name is Mvemba Phezo Dizolele. I'm a senior fellow and the director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. This is a podcast where we talk everything Africa, politics, economics, security, and culture. Welcome.

In this episode we turn our attention to one of Africa's most pressing challenges, addressing the continent's significant housing deficit and driving sustainable urban development. Africa's rapid population growth, ongoing urbanization and shifting economic landscapes have made access to affordable housing and modern infrastructure more urgent than ever. Despite these challenges, innovative approaches and strategic partnerships are entering to close the housing gap and transform African cities for future generations.

Joining me on Into Africa to explore these questions is Thierno-Habib Hann whose expertise in housing, finance, investment and public-private partnerships will offer invaluable insight into the evolving landscape of urban development on the continent. His perspectives will help us understand both the scale of the challenge and the promising solutions ahead for Africa's housing future.

Thierno-Habib Hann the current managing director of and CEO of Shelter Afrique Development Bank brings over two decades of global experience in banking, capital market and housing finance. He has been at the forefront of designing and implementing large-scale housing finance solutions across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Hann's extensive track record includes leading multi-billion dollar housing programs at the International Finance Corporation and investment teams at leading financial institutions such as JP Morgan, Chase and Goldman Sachs. Habib, good morning and welcome to Into Africa.

Thierno-Habib Hann: Good morning, sir. Thank you.

Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: It's a pleasure to have you. The issue that we'll be talking about today is quite big, housing, finance and infrastructure development in Africa. But to start, we'd like to get a sense from you what is Shelter Afrique Development Bank.

Thierno-Habib Hann: Thank you so much for having me this afternoon in Washington, D.C. Shelter Afrique Development Bank, or SHAFDB in short, is the only multilateral development bank specialized in affordable housing and urban infrastructure development in Africa. So we are a 42 years old institution created by African States and African Development Bank and Africa Re, which is the Africa Reinsurance Corporation since 1982. So today we have 44 member states across the continent and we have our headquarters in Nairobi, in Kenya and regional offices in Cote d'Ivoire, Abidjan and Nigeria in Abuja to cover our western, central and North Africa spheres of the continent. But we do operate centrally from Nairobi, Kenya and basically our mandate is to achieve affordable, inclusive, and sustainable housing for all in Africa and we do that via different business lines that we have as a development bank. So we have four main pillars or business lines.

The first one is to work with financial institutions and the banks in the different countries to provide them with lines of credit, financing, long-term funding and affordable funding for the banks and financial institutions to on land to the housing sector and urban infrastructure sector. And we also finance microfinance institutions for very low income housing or incremental housing production by households. And we also set up mortgage refinancing companies which provide long-term funding to the banks in the different regions like CRRH in West Africa, which is the Caisse Régionale de Refinancement Hypothécaire, which is a mortgage refinancing company for the eight CFA zone countries in West Africa, WAMU Zone. And Kenya also, we set up KMRC. This is a Kenyan mortgage Refinance company. In Uganda, we are working on UMRC, which is a Uganda mortgage Refinance company. But Tanzania has the Tanzanian mortgage refinance companies that we set up. This is really to provide long-term funding to the sector because as you know, the longer the maturity of the mortgages right, the more affordable they become for households. So that's the first pillar.

The second pillar is project finance, so lending to developers, private developers, large scale construction companies to scale up the housing production in the countries.

And then the third pillar is PPPs, Public-Private Partnerships with the government. And we provide basically advisory and structuring and financing to government PPP programs where government provide access to cheaper land, affordable land and we provide the funding and identify developers that we can finance to develop these housing. And this is really to achieve affordable homes, dignified homes for the African populations. And part of this PPP and sovereign department, we also help governments improve the urban settings by working on urban regeneration. As you know, slums are pretty much widespread across the continent of Africa, so the idea for us is to clean up and get rid of the slums, rebuild the city centers and then basically create land value because you, you already in prime locations in the cities and we can build affordable homes alongside commercial and high-end sort of real estate which are really profitable for developers.

And the fourth business line, the fourth pillar for us is the impact fund basically. So we call it the fund management group, FMG. And the fund management group is focusing on seven thematic areas that are impactful in the housing value chain. So the first one is green climate resilience. So this is really providing sustainable homes, right? And climate-friendly homes. As you know, with all the climate change going on around the world, households get affected the first, so we've gotta make sure that those homes are resilient. So that's the first thematic under the fund management group.

The second one is gender. So housing for women, this is about inclusion, financial inclusion, making sure that women can have homeownership and also get access to title homeownership because in a lot of countries actually women are not necessarily allowed to own a title, right, a home title, right? So that's quite surprising. But we are pushing to change that and by financing those women through banks and also financing SMEs that are owned by women in the housing value chain.

Hence, the third thematic, which is SMEs and trade where we financing construction companies, construction materials, manufacturers within the countries and import, export of construction materials, especially between African countries to encourage trade between the countries in construction materials. Some countries have a good manufacturing capacity for cement and other construction materials that they can export in neighboring countries. So we facilitate that through financial institutions.

And most importantly, as you know, SMEs and trade finance create jobs. So our final goal is really to create jobs in the economy as well.

And the fourth uh, thematic area is Islamic finance. We're working with the Middle East, the Gulf countries to get access to concessional affordable funding to finance low income housing. And this is really similar to rent to own when you talk about Ijara Murabaha. These are financial products in the Islamic world that allow, uh, households to get access to ethical funding, which is really cheaper than the commercial and standard sort of funding, so this is about affordability.

And number five is uh, basically infrastructure, trunk infrastructure. So making sure that those homes have access to basic infrastructure like access to water, electricity, sewage, secondary roads. And all of that needs concessional funding, uh, in the funds team to really reduce the cost of housing because if you have to basically reflect the cost of infrastructure in the home price, then it doesn't become affordable anymore, so that's why we have this as a thematic area.

Number six, we have migrant and refugees. As you know, with all the crisis around Africa, we have a huge population of refugees and also the migration crisis to Europe. Young guys dying in the Mediterranean every day by the dozens is very heartbreaking. So for us, our mandate is about creating jobs for the youth within African countries via large-scale construction project where we can basically scale up the youth into different skills in the value chain of construction like you need masons, electricians, you know, plumbers and other skills and then put the kids to work and keep them on the continent instead of dying in the Mediterranean. So we in discussion the European Union and other financiers to say, "Look, you know, instead of spending billions at your frontiers to keep those kids away, let's try to address the issue from the source, right?" So really creating jobs on the continent and keeping them on the continent.

And number seven and last for uh, the fund management group as a thematic is the diaspora. So I'm sitting here in the U.S. and we've been meeting a lot of diaspora associations. Uh, and the idea is to say, "Look, Shelter Afrique has the reputation and expertise to finance affordable housing across the continent." And uh, the diaspora needs home in their countries. And usually the story goes, someone in the diaspora will send money to their family to build a home and they'll never see the home, right? So I think that's something that we can really have a value proposition there to help the diaspora get access to affordable housing in their countries because their countries are shareholders and we know the markets, we know the developers and we can really put in place financing structures for the diaspora to get homeownership in their countries in a transparent and very honest way so that they don't have to lose their funding.

And also the other thing with the diaspora is that they can invest in investment vehicles that we can set up. We signed recently, actually it was last October here in Washington with the stock exchange of the West African Monetary Union countries. It's called BRVM Bourse Régionale des Valeurs Mobilières in Abidjan. And the idea is to build real estate investment trust products, mortgage finance products via capital markets so that the diaspora investors can finance and get investment returns, right, through those vehicles that we'll be using to deploy in the markets in those countries.

And then the third thing about the diaspora is really about skills transfer. You have a lot of the diaspora that's really much in the space in the sector of construction and housing within, you know, the U.S. and Europe and other countries. The idea is to encourage them to come back and set up shop and bring their expertise and work with the local economy.

So overall that's how we operate.

Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Okay.

Thierno-Habib Hann: Our main goal is about economic transformation, job creation and impact.

Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Thank you very much for that portrait of Shelter Afrique. Habib, question for you. You are owned by government. These are sovereigns. You are trying to address an issue that is very close to most people in the world. It's not just in Africa. What is the main challenge? What is the deficit in housing across the continent? The continent is over 1 billion people. We know the majority of them are young, which mean they don't have money. We know that there's an issue of unemployment, which is high in a lot of countries.

So when you list all these things, you know, some of them sound fantastic. Like you talk about affordable, inclusive, you know, climate smart. How do you go about doing this when in fact the majority of the population do not have jobs? The majority of the population are young with a lot of dreams you described in the last minute. So migration, cross Mediterranean and so on. Let's just kind of dissect those. Where's the need and how do you address them given all the other issue that I just mentioned because they go along and your partners who are these countries are the ones who are supposed to be implementing policies that will change that as well.

Thierno-Habib Hann: Absolutely. So, the deficit in Africa today stands at 53 million housing units that are needed today. And this is growing double-digit every year. So, the crisis is here, and rapid urbanization has been the main culprit causing this huge deficit. And also, the fact that today urbanization is really driving this crisis. You have about 40,000 people coming to cities every day.

So, the idea for us is to create scalable, inclusive, and climate resilient solutions because you've seen in many countries where you have floods and landslides basically affecting homes just because urban planning hasn't taken into account basically how those homes should be built and where they should be built. So, our mandate is to address all of those, right?

And also, not looking at housing as a social need only, right? Housing has economic impact, right? It really facilitates the development of infrastructure. When you talk about health, education, productivity and stability in the country, these are all indicators that are affected by proper housing.

And then in general, the issue in Africa also is about the informal sector, right? We have a large informal sector in Africa. Most countries have something like 70 to 80, even 90% sometimes of informal sector in the economy. And the idea is how do you serve those populations when they cannot get access to financing, right? So really building systems to address that as part of our mandate.

Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: So, can you on that point, can you give us a couple examples how does this work? 'Cause I think I look, you know, travel to Africa, there are a bunch of issues and I think you've raised some of them, but just the planning hits you, right? You go from the center of the city in one specific city, town. The moment you leave that area, things change, the landscape change, all the other changes that you can see in this space. So how do you engage countries? Can you talk about couple project that you've done that can kind of bring all these issues to bear in the way that we can better appreciate the work that you do?

Thierno-Habib Hann: No, absolutely. So like I was saying earlier, we address housing from a value chain integrated approach perspective. You cannot address the housing crisis by only looking at one side of the equation, right? You cannot only look at the supply side of homes or the demand side, mortgages and others. You also have to integrate the enabling environment. So the regulatory framework. So the policies, right?

So that's why the fact that we have the countries as shareholders is very much beneficial because we do have access to the government, we do have access to ministers, to the administration in general. So this is why we've put in place, and by the way, we undergoing a major transformation since we took over the institution last two years. We not only doing the transformation into the development bank, that's how the name changed from Shelter Afrique to Shelter Afrique Development Bank, ShaftDB have new statutes and basically we are transforming institution. And along that we have a whole new strategy which now as I was saying, takes into account the full value chain. And we starting from that policy setting environment, the vision definition. So we have this model we call VIRAL. So how do you make housing VIRAL?

So this is a Shelter Afrique model and framework to address and to basically run a diagnostic in the housing and urban infrastructure sector within each country. So VIRAL means vision, institutions, regulations, actors and local initiatives. Okay? And the local initiative part is about co-creation of solutions, right? Through PPPs, Public-Private Partnerships with the government. Governments have the housing programs and plans. You go to Senegal, they talk about a hundred thousand units. Housing programs, you go to Sierra Leone, they talk about maybe 5,000 housing unit program, et cetera. So we basically partner the government to do this diagnostic to identify the vision, the policies and the constraints in the institutions and we help them build up those institutions and then address all those difficulties starting with the planning that you talked about 'cause the historical issues with housing in Africa has been poor planning basically.

So now we are coming on board and trying to tell the governments, "Look, you can actually create more value in your cities. And and doing that can actually not only create jobs but drive economic growth." We've seen countries or cities or even country cities, right? Basically a country can be just one city. You know, you talk about Dubai is not a country, but it's almost a country on its own, but it's just one city, right? You have different places in the world like that. And the way they develop the economy is through building the cities, right?

So our mandate today is to work with the government, do the diagnostic and see where we can address some of the constraints and then build value from there.

Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: So in the 42 years that Shelter Afrique has existed are these specific project that come to mind, you know, when we travel, you know, you go to Malabo in Equatorial Guinea or you go to Luanda in Angola, you see a lot of this new project, high rises often, big apartments and they're often built by the Chinese. And then I remember in the case of Malabo, as we're driving around, you see that people have not occupied these buildings either. Grass is growing, overtaking the place.

So when we talk about, you know, this brings to the forth the issue that you mentioned, so I wanna push back a little bit. So where's the inclusivity? You know, so are there examples in city X or in country X that you were able to engage with these shareholders of yours, this government kind of from the entire supply or the entire value chain, right? Whether it's the VIRAL or the other issue that you mentioned, like government X invited you in because they have a segment of the population they wanted to help out of homelessness or lack of property. And you work with them from start to kind of the projects with the people that they meant to help, of course who are also your constituents beyond your shareholders.

Thierno-Habib Hann: Mm-hmm. No, absolutely. Look, as I said, we are in the process of implementing this new strategy in the past two years and we've been building this VIRAL model and we've been starting to engage the countries. We have approximately six pilot countries where we have run this VIRAL program and framework and we in the process of concluding the work on that and which we'll be presenting at our annual general meetings of shareholders in July in Algeria, where we'll be holding our AGM. And the idea for us is to showcase basically some of those models, some of those examples where we we're able to engage the governments and basically identify the constraints and the issues and the planning and the strategy.

And that's one thing that I wanted to say is that the VIRAL model and framework actually would lead to a, what we call a strategy document to drive the urban development in that particular country. So that strategy document would be basically the document that would allow us to plan how we work in a particular country.

So you know, we are looking at some of these countries like Gabon where they're actually looking to build a whole new city and we have an agreement we signed with the government to actually help them support about 2,800 housing units. A place like Senegal, we signed an agreement to help them develop about 3,000 housing units and put in place a digital platform that would allow them to connect supply and demand of housing and also linking up to the diaspora.

So these are things that we're putting together, we're partnering with the government of Kenya, you are aware of what they call the Boma Yango digital platform, where the government is really linking up also demand to supply and they developing today of 120,000 housing units in that program. And the idea for us is to see how we can advise governments also to make sure they can scale up, right, the solution because remember we are a development bank and we do represent these governments and we are supposed to be sort of like the financiers on behalf of those governments, right? So allowing those government not to take the burden of raising funding on their balance sheet. So we'll be actually doing that on their behalf on our balance sheet and deploying within the countries.

Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: In that case, how different are you from other institutions you've worked with or worked at? You know, so the bank, Shelter Afrique is a development bank targeting a specific segment of society and specific sector of the economy. But you are at IFC, you are at Goldman Sachs and others. So how do you distinguish yourself from the others within the African context?

Thierno-Habib Hann: Sure. So we are first of all an African institution owned by Africans states and African institutions so far. Even though we are about to open up as well to international investors as a class C shareholding or non-African states, similar to the AFDB a bit, but again, the majority will still be controlled by African institutions and countries. But for us, really the key is to have customized solutions for African problems because it's not the same reality. We don't have the same issues you can find in Singapore or in India. The societies are a bit different. You can learn from different experiences, but you have to customize the solutions to the African continent.

So you mentioned some of the institutions that I was part of, I mean obviously some of those, uh, in environments or operated, you know, environments that were more sophisticated. And when you talk about Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, we talking about mortgage-backed securities securitization, you know? So you cannot do that until you've built the primary market, right? So that's what we are doing today.

We're building the primary markets through mortgage refinancing companies, providing long-term funding so that we get a pipeline of securities, mortgages for instance, that we can then securitize down the road and develop capital markets. But we still actually issuing bonds in the capital market. We recently issued basically 46 billion Nairas in Nigeria. This is part of a 200 billion Nairas program to provide local currency to finance projects in Nigeria on the supply and demand side, financing banks, financing developers in Nigeria because it's so important today to get access to local currency, given the FX risk and FX fluctuations with the global financial crisis, it's very important to have local currency so that we don't expose our customers and clients to the FX risk.

So we are doing this also in many other regions. So in the CFA zone, we already issued at least five times in local currency in CFA for the West African Monetary Union countries. We've done it in schillings in Kenya as well to really drive the financing of our programs within the countries in local currency. So that's critical for us.

So that's, when I talk about African solutions to African problems, you know, this is what I'm talking about. We need to really tap into local resources, working with the pension funds, insurance companies, capital markets within the country to generate the funding that's needed for the economy.

Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: One element that we have alluded to but we've not really addressed, and I want to see how Shelter Afrique deals with this, it's urban migration. You've talked a lot about the cities, the city, the city 'cause in most African countries everybody want to migrate to the city and they migrate to the city because that's where the services are. But I, I think you'll agree here, I'll submit to you and I think you'll agree that the average young man or young woman who's living in the mountains outside Nairobi or in the farmland, lowland outside Kinshasa want to stay where the family is, ideally. They're not necessarily looking forward to moving into the cities, but these opportunities don't always come to them. You know, when we compare Africa or African countries are a certain time in point in the development, so we're not gonna expect them to turn into a Norway or a France overnight. On average, these countries are 60 years old.

But what we see in the developed nation is people actually don't move to the city in large numbers. People want to stay where they are. And that has become a sign itself. Like in fact a lot of people want to leave the city to go back into the countryside, quote unquote. How do you engage those large numbers of people who are in the countryside and only move to the city because they have no choice. If you, banks like yours can help finance them. I know you have microfinance, you have impact funds, also gender issues there. So how do we engage those? Because the megacities of the future will be in Africa and more and more, some of us who look closely at these issues are worried because we're not seeing the transformation of the countryside.

Thierno-Habib Hann: Excellent question. And this is where actually I should have started because the history of our institution is simple. Why were we created first of all in 1982? Remember African states, like you just said, the very young, right? Most of them got the independence in the sixties and 1964 heads of state got together and said, "Look, you know, we can gain political independence but we also need to gain economic independence, right?" So economic sovereignty. And to do that you need to create an institution that is owned by Africans, hence the African Development Bank, right? AFDB was created. And then later on they realized that with the independence movement, right, people felt empowered, right? Now people felt like they needed to go and look for opportunities in the cities, right? So borders opened up between rural areas and the cities, right? Independence. So people moved and migrated into the cities massively because obviously the colonial masters left, you know, precipitously somehow and nothing was planned really. So then the cities got crowded.

So the heads of state, the new young heads of state back then realized that look, AFDB, the African develop bank has so many other agendas to fight poverty, you know, agriculture, et cetera. How can we now create a new institution to actually focus on this? Because if we don't resolve this urban housing crisis, is gonna be a major issue. So Shelter Afrique then was created under the mandate of the African Development Bank, but then all the governments also became shareholders and the idea was to have this institution be specialized to address this situation. So the original objective was to address this urban migration.

Now, the point you're making is fantastic because it's really addressing the issue from the source now, right? In terms of how do you make sure people are comfortable where they are and they don't have to move. Now, that's beyond just housing, right? That has to do with also economic opportunities, right? Within the regions, within the rural areas, so it's a lot of things that are linked, but housing is part of it, right?

And I think if you can have dignified shelter and when you talk about dignified shelter, you're talking about also all the amenities and basic infrastructure that go with it, right? So access to water, electricity, et cetera. Even when you go within the city itself, I'm from the Republic of Guinea and I know that there's an area which is downtown, the CBD is called Kaloum. And you have people who've been there since independence days, but they're living in uh, sort of almost slums sort of housing. But you are talking about slums that are in the middle of town, close to the ministry of finance, ministry of you know, infrastructure, et cetera. Even the presidency is right there. It is what they call Presqu'ile. It's like Presqu'ile de Kaloum, right? It kind of looks like the Wall Street area in New York 'cause I spend a lot of time there. Very similar in terms of physical outlay and all that.

But you have slums there and these guys don't want to leave that location just because there's always electricity, there's no cuts of electricity, right? But when you propose and offer them a better housing outside of that location, they don't wanna move because they feel like they won't get all the basic infrastructure they're getting here. Access to water, you open the tap water, is there. Electricity.

So these are the things that we are working on with the government to make sure that those basic infrastructure, right, are there when we are building housing, shelter, et cetera. Even in the rural areas, right? So it's an integrated development framework, right?

And that's why we have this VIRAL model to really diagnose and see where the issues are, the constraints are and come up with solutions through the, what we call CHUP, actually. The CHUPS is the Country Housing and Urban Partnership Strategy, C-H-U-P-S. CHUPS. That's the product that comes out of the VIRAL framework that we have with the government.

But to your point, I think it's really key to address the countryside, right? From an infrastructure standpoint, from a quality of life, from jobs perspective. And this is why actually we have created an alliance of African Multilateral Financial Institutions. So it's called AMFI, A-A-M-F-I. And this alliance basically put together all African Multilateral development banks like ourselves, Shelter Afrique. You have Frexim Bank, Trading Development Bank, TDB, you have, uh, TD, you have Zepri, you have AFC Africa Re. So we were seven institutions, FSA. And now today we are 10 African Multilateral institutions that are specialized in different sectors, some of them in trades, infra, insurance.

So we are coming together and this is just what it's been one year, right? We created the institution on the sidelines of the African Union Heads of State Summit in Addis Ababa last year. So this year we celebrated the first year anniversary. And the idea is that we work together within different countries to come up with an integrated strategy and each institution has its area of focus, right? And deliver on this mandate, but together, right? So that we can really have the impact they're looking for. A country like Kenya for instance, right? Has a major and interesting market of SACCOs, they call them SACCOs. These are savings and credit cooperatives.

And today you have over more than a thousand of those financial cooperatives. They function like banks, but they address really this financial inclusion issue. It's a major success story in Kenya and we are working with the SACCOs, right? Because they really are addressing exactly the issues you're talking about, right? Working in the rural areas, you have SACCOs for farmers, you have SACCOs for doctors, SACCOs for teachers, et cetera. Mwalimu SACCOs for the teachers, et cetera, et cetera.

So the idea is to see how we really go down market, right? To address and reach down to those populations that are also in remote areas.

Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: That's very interesting. And the question I have for that, when you talk about the SACCOs and the various professional sectors coming together with their own class two financing PPP, which we alluded to earlier, Public-Private Partnerships, what are the main challenges then are opportunities in mobilizing finance for housing and infrastructure across the countries you've been working on using this framework of PPP? So, in a few minutes that we have left, can you flesh out a little bit, how is that work? Because I think this example of SACCOs, I think speaks to that a little bit.

Thierno-Habib Hann: Mm-hmm.

Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: If I understand correct.

Thierno-Habib Hann: Absolutely. Absolutely. So PPPs for us are really the solution to address the large-scale housing deficit and infrastructure deficit in Africa.

So as I said, 53 million housing deficit. If you assume that the home price is about $25,000, just to be conservative, just do the math, you need about more than $1.4 trillion, $1 trillion of investment just to address the current housing deficit in Africa. You don't generate that overnight. Even all African Multilateral development bank together, the balance sheets are in the billions.

Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Not trillions.

Thierno-Habib Hann: Yeah, you need a trillion plus, right? Just one sector, okay, housing. So my point here that I'm trying to get to is that we need an integrated partnership approach and that's why PPPs are very relevant, right? Cause government can provide affordable land and we can generate funding, financing and identify developers that are capable to put in place large-scale developments, right? In the different countries.

And we have been in discussions with some of those large-scale developers, we call them EPCs in Egypt, in India and other places, we have signed some partnerships with them to bring them into our market to allow to develop basically capacity to deliver in large-scale 'cause delivering large-scale helps achieve also economies of scale in the construction value chain and cost, right? So PPPs for us are the solutions.

Now, you ask the question about some of the constraints. So usually when people talk about PPPs in Africa or PPP's regulations, they focus more on energy infrastructure. And when they talk about infrastructure, it's about roads, about transportation, et cetera. When we talk about housing PPPs, it's a very specialized area. It's not similar. You cannot structure housing PPP the same way as you will structure a road PPP. So this is where we come in with our experience in structuring such PPPs and also knowing and having worked in Asia, uh, I was head of housing finance for IFC for Asia-Pacific based in Thailand, and India was my biggest market. And we've seen that how PPP markets have really helped India achieve access to housing. Today, the Indian housing market's more than $800 billion. This is when I was leaving there again, so much more than that today, $800 billion. And they're really going below market. They're building homes for $5,000, you know, to really address the masses, right? 'Cause that's where the crisis is.

So PPPs have really helped them achieve some of those goals. So that's why I think in Africa, we also developing the framework for those PPPs in housing to be specifically in housing, putting in place the regulations, the framework, and then working with the governments to pilot some of those programs. I mean, we in discussion with Rwanda, I mean in Kenya and even in West Africa, some of those governments are willing to work with us to do those PPPs.

Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: The task ahead of you and the head of everyone who's working these spaces in Africa is tremendous, is big. So how if you look into a crystal ball, what do you see for the next 10 years in this sector?

Thierno-Habib Hann: So I think hope is not a strategy, but I think we are putting in place all the elements to really take us to the next, basically to the next steps in terms of leapfrogging, right? The same way this has happened in the digital area, in the telephony area, you know. So in the housing sector, we strongly believe that there's some leapfrogging that we can also do here, learn from experiences from other countries and other sectors to really allow people to get access to dignified homes that are affordable, inclusive, and sustainable, right? From a climate resilience perspective. So this is how Shelter Afrique Development Bank is positioning itself as the anchor resource mobilization institution for housing and urban infrastructure in Africa, which by the way, we were recognized that the African Union Heads of States Summit and also African Union Urban Forum as the anchor for resource mobilization for the sector across the continent because we were set up by the countries and this is our mandate.

So going forward, we would expect zero slum in Africa. We would expect cities that generate jobs, create economic opportunities and growth and cities to become basically the source of investments and attract investments.

And one of the things that we've been also looking at is linking urban development to tourism, for instance, right? In places like Djibouti and other smaller countries, major opportunities for tourism development. But the size of the population is so small that actually you need that to drive urban development, right? So real estate can become that anchor basically investment tool or element of attraction of investments, right, into the countries. And we think that a few countries that have that opportunity to develop the tourism sector via real estate. And that has happened in Dubai. If you remember in Dubai you had the Burj Khalifa that was built in the middle of nowhere, the desert, and all of a sudden real estate just sprung up all around it. And those real estate now are even more expensive sometimes than some of the units in the Burj Khalifa because they have the view on the bush.

So I would say that it's about building that anchor investment and then attracting investors. In Rwanda, we've been looking at actually an opportunity to build a whole new city around the basketball arena that has been put in place with the African Basketball Association, basically working with the NBA Africa to do that. So we think that there's an opportunity to create economic growth via housing, real estate and urban development.

Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: On that note, it sounds like leapfrogging will be the key, but that's not gonna happen over the next 10 years. There's a long way to go. Thierno-Habib Hann, managing director and CEO of Shelter Afrique Development Bank in Nairobi, joining us here in studio in Washington D.C. today, we thank you for coming here and sharing this key insight and perspective on the development of the housing market in Africa across the 50 countries there. Thank you very much.

Thierno-Habib Hann: Thank you so much. And we stay very optimistic.

Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Thank you for listening. We want to have more conversations about Africa. Tell your friends, subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts. You can also read our analysis and report at csis.org/africa. So long.

(END.)