2021 Housing Finance in Africa Yearbook - 12th edition

As Africa emerges from the intensity of the global pandemic, housing markets across the continent show signs of resilience and innovation demonstrated in innovative projects targeting households in the lower income segment. Africa’s housing markets are feeling the impact of two years of COVID-19 and economic lockdowns. With steep contractions in economic growth in many African countries, decent housing remains out of reach for most people because they cannot afford even the cheapest newly built house by a private sector developer.

For this reason, our 2021 Housing Finance in Africa Yearbook focuses on the challenges faced by African housing markets emerging from two years of weathering COVID-19 and economic lockdowns. In this context, CAHF argues that much more delivery capacity is needed to address the affordable housing gap, well beyond the cohort of formal developers that are currently understood to underpin the sector. Policy makers and the private sector need to recognise small scale providers – small scale developers, micro builders, and households – as key suppliers of housing in addition to the more obviously recognized developer sector. Policy should explicitly embrace the capacity of these smaller scale players – and recognise the massive potential of their collective effort.

The 2021 Yearbook was launched at the 37th Annual AUHF Conference held 2-5 November 2021 – to view the launch presentation, click here. The comprehensive publication now covers 55 African countries, and is produced in both English and French (with the Mozambique profile also available in Portuguese). It is the collaborative output of over 60 contributors, who together form a community of practice of housing finance experts in-country.

The document can be downloaded as a single pdf at the link below. In addition, the individual country profiles can be downloaded separately via our country pages. The regional data summaries are also available separately for download by accessing the respective regional pages here.

When utilising information and data in the Yearbook for publications, reports and articles, please include the following citation: Centre for Affordable Housing Finance (2021). Housing Finance in Africa Yearbook: 12th Edition – 2021. https://housingfinanceafrica.org/resources/yearbook/