Formal Rental Housing in Sub Sahara-Africa: Opportunities for Providing Affordable Housing for All: A White Paper for Policy-Makers, Practitioners and Academics

In 2014, Shelter Afrique organised the African Rental Housing Conference. The conference, titled, Formal Rental Housing in Sub Sahara-Africa: Opportunities for Providing Affordable Housing for All, served to forward their rental housing agenda. The outcome of the conference is a White Paper that explores the constraints facing the formal rental sector in sub-Saharan Africa. The White Paper ends with six recommendations to increase investment in rental housing. First, governments must explicitly commit to supporting the rental housing market. Second, governments should release public land for the development of rental units. Third, governments should carefully create incentives for private developers. Fourth, government should create special task forces to enable rental developments. Fifth, there is the need for the creation of a rental housing development manual. Sixth, it calls for the African Rental Housing Conference to become an annual event. Shelter Afrique hosted the next conference in 2015 in Accra, Ghana.