Report Series: Landscape of Housing Investment - Uganda

The National Social Security Fund (NSSF) is the main source of long-term funds in the country. It collects Ugx 40 billion per month from clients. However, with the establishment of the Uganda Retirement Benefits Regulatory Authority Act (URBRA) 2011, access to this local pool of long-term funds has been restricted. The Act established URBRA as the regulatory authority to govern activities of pension sector players including determining the classes of investments for pension funds. URBA excludes direct loans to commercial banks and other institutions. Before this period, NSSF had invested heavily in loans to commercial banks and the new restrictions present a serious threat to the long-term funding required by commercial banks in the issuance of mortgages. Their are  14 DFIs, collectively, mobilizing US$ 6.3 billion in the period 2000 to 2017, to fund multi-sectoral programs. China (through Exim Bank– US$ 2.1 billion) is home to the biggest investor in Uganda, followed by the African Development Bank– US$ 1.2 billion, the United Kingdom (CDC – US$ 800 million), Germany (KFW – US$ 485 million) and USA (USAID – US$ 303 million). Twelve out of the 14 DFIs committed over US$ 100 million, in the period 2000 to 2017. Countries with the least source of investment were USA (HFHI – US$ 2 million), Kenya (Shelter Afrique – US$ 36 million) and Uganda (EADB – 50 million). The report provides details on the investors’ source of capital and other parameters that define their investment models. 

The report presents and in-depth analysis of the landscape of investment in Uganda. It provides useful data on existing DFI investors, the type of instruments they use to invest and the investment environment they operate in. The report forms part of The Centre for Affordable Housing Finance’s Investor Programme which aims at quantify the breadth of investment activity with respect to housing and housing finance across Africa, and to establish a mechanism to track this on an ongoing basis. This project has collected data and highlights gaps and opportunities in the investment landscape. With the aim of stimulating greater investment in affordable housing and connecting investors with potential investments, the report profiles investors and investment instruments with the greatest impact on the housing finance market within the EAC Region. Growing financial sector experience and increasingly sophisticated financial instruments are driving investor interest in African real estate. This includes new market opportunities related to a rising urban middle class, an increasingly localized construction material industry and innovations in housing finance such the emergence of Real Estate Investment Trusts and mortgage liquidity facilities across Africa. However, a key barrier to this growth remains the chronic lack of rigorous data on the breadth and character of financial infrastructure investment. This is particularly true for the housing sector as stimulating targeted investments requires highly differentiated data that illustrates market segmentation. In providing market intelligence that makes the case for investment in underserved markets (segmenting and quantifying the demand side; and scoping, understanding and tracking the supply side), we can support a better policy environment & increased private sector activity in affordable housing markets. In this way, we catalyse scale interventions. Without this data, targeted interventions become challenging and result in unresponsive housing finance packages, the high occurrence of Non-performing loans (NPLs) and poor uptake of new residential developments.