Ghana: Economic Impact of Housing Construction and Rental Activities: Cost Benchmarking and Housing Economic Value Chain Assessment

As part of our Housing and the Economy project, this report uses CAHF’s Housing Cost Benchmarking and Housing Economic Value Chain Modelling methodologies to analyse Ghana’s housing market. This analysis provides an overview of the structure of Ghana’s supply and demand for housing, quantifies the sector’s contribution to the economy and identifies recommendations to improve the economic impact and affordability reach of Ghana’s housing sector.

The study finds that residential housing construction and rental had a total direct economic impact equivalent to 7.3 percent of Ghana’s GDP in 2018. Ghana’s international trade in building materials is highly skewed towards imports. In 2018, it had a trade deficit of US$471 million in these materials. Exports of building materials accounted for 1.32 percent of the country’s total merchandise exports while imports accounted for 5.86 percent of its merchandise imports.

Key findings and recommendations focused on improving Ghanaian households’ access to affordable housing are divided into four specific areas: Mechanisms to improve effective demand for housing; Approaches to improving the cost of housing development; and Initiatives to enable housing to contribute more significantly to Ghana’s future economic growth and development.

On the 31st of August 2021, CAHF and FSD Africa co-hosted a virtual roundtable on Ghana’s Housing Economic Value Chain to disseminate and critically discuss key findings and recommendations of the Ghana Housing Economic Value Chain/Housing Cost Benchmarking Study and the Data Agenda outputs for Ghana. David Gardner provided a 20 minute presentation on the HEVC methodology and findings and recommendations of the study which can be viewed on the video link above.