International Shelter-Afrique symposium opens in Windhoek

THE 28th annual general meeting of Shelter-Afrique, a company created by African governments to invest in housing development, kic-ked off in Windhoek yesterday.

Under the banner ‘Developing New Strategies for Africa’s Housing Markets in the Current Global Economic Crisis’, the two-day conference will focus on African solutions to global problems. Shelter-Afrique was started in 1982 and Namibia is one of its youngest members, having only joined in 1998.The organisation currently includes 42 countries, 22 of which are represented at the symposium.Shelter-Afrique currently has projects in 30 of those countries.In Namibia, it has been involved in building a low-cost housing project at Rehoboth. The company provides direct loans, credit guarantees, and technical assistance to public and private institutions such as developers, housing finance institutions and parastatals for housing finance. President Hifikepunye Pohamba, speaking at the launch, said Shelter-Afrique ‘came into existence at a time when housing problems facing many African countries were reaching worrying proportions’.He said it ‘gave greater attention and resource allocation to the housing sector’ and made housing a priority in many country’s budgets. However, one of the main problems the organisation is currently facing is funding.According to Issifou Kantchati, Minister of Housing and Urban Development in Togo and the chairman of the 27th annual conference held in his country last year, the company is currently US$10 million in arrears and is looking for more donor funding.He said loans of US$30 million are in the pipeline from the African Development Bank, as well as two more of over US$10 million from other development partners. One of the key concerns of conference participants this year will be to increase finance available to low-income earners.George Kozonguizi, UN-Habitat Programme Manager in Namibia, said ‘there is a major concern that finance … is becoming less affordable as a result of high interest rates, and the current nervousness in lending to the low-income housing market’. Presentations on the state of the Namibian housing situation revealed that the country currently has a housing backlog of about 100 000.Also, 54 per cent of the country’s existing households are currently said to be without water. Blamed for this backlog was a lack of financing for regional and local authorities and the high cost of building material.To this end, the establishment of the Habitat Research and Development Centre is supposed to provide some relief.The centre does research into local types of building materials which are more cost-efficient and ecologically friendly. At the moment 80 per cent of Namibia’s building materials are imported from South Africa.