A GROUP of housing development officials from English speaking nations in Africa, including Tanzania, were told early this week that they should now discard a British colonial housing law that was enacted in 1947, because it generates slums in urban centres.

A director at the Centre for the Study of African Economies at the University of Oxford in the UK, Prof Paul Collier, told the officials that the Town and County Planning Act of 1947, which was enacted by the British Parliament in 1947 was no longer useful. The professor said that this outdated legislation should now be thrown out because it no longer works to the advantage of people who live in cities, municipalities and towns.

Read more: Tanzania – Unsanitary Urban Slums Worrisome

Foreign Policy – September/October 2012

There is something viscerally repulsive about urban poverty: the stench of open sewers, the choking smoke of smoldering trash heaps, the pools of fetid drinking water filmed with the rainbow color of chemical spills. It makes poverty in the countryside seem almost Arcadian by comparison. The rural poor may lack nutrition, health care, education, and infrastructure; still, they do the backbreaking work of tending farms in settings that not only are more bucolic, but also represent the condition of most of humanity for most of history. With life so squalid in urban slums, why would anyone want to move there?

Read more: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/08/13/in_praise_of_slums

thisdailylive.com. September, 25, 2012. Good things may be in the offing in the housing sector if some of the signs we are witnessing are anything to go by. First of all, following several months of hard work, on the 14th of December 2011 the Federal Executive Council (FEC) officially adopted the revised National Housing and Urban Development Policies as official policies of the Federal Government. The new housing policy whose prime objective is to “ensure that all Nigerians own or have access to decent, safe and sanitary housing in healthy environment with infrastructural services at affordable cost, with secure tenure” dedicates a whole chapter to the social housing sector, specifying its target as those in the no-income, low-income and lower-mid-income groups – an upper limit that is defined as not exceeding 4 times the national minimum wage (presently N18,000) or, N72,000 per month.

But the adoption of the new policy is not all that is brewing in the housing sector. A separate bill, privately sponsored by Senator Benedict Ayade (Cross River North) ‘to provide a Social Housing Scheme in Nigeria…’ has gone through first and second readings and will, hopefully become law before the year runs out. The sponsorship of this bill deserves the commendation of all and sundry who yearn to see housing made affordable to ordinary people in this country. The proposed social housing scheme, whose main objectives include the significant improvement of the well-being of the poor & needy, will provide a window of opportunity for governments at all levels to demonstrate their commitment to the provision of housing as a social responsibility to the citizenry; it will also seek to unlock benefits to the economy in the realm of wealth creation and employment generation.

Read more: Sam Odia -Affordable Housing in South Africa II

Read also: Sam Odia – Nigeria: Social Housing – The South African Model III

United Nations, New York – Worldwide, more than a billion people live in slums. As many as one million of them in the Kenyan slum of Kibera. Slum Survivors tells the stories of a few of them and charts their remarkable courage in the face of extreme poverty.

The Centre for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa (CAHF) is the housing finance division of FinMark Trust, a non-profit trust with a mission of ‘making financial markets work for the poor’. The vision of CAHF is to be a primary source of information and debate relating to affordable housing finance in Africa, with a special focus on the SADC region. Our work covers three main areas: understanding the housing asset, innovation in housing finance, and monitoring housing sector performance. As a way to promote housing finance sector development in Africa, CAHF regularly commissions research studies; hosts forums; strategy and discussion sessions and workshops; and participates in local and international conferences and debates on housing finance. As a result, the Centre has become a credible source of information, thought leadership, and a point of contact for housing finance practitioners in both the public, private and NGO sectors, including private companies, donor agencies, policy makers and other stakeholders across the African continent. The Centre also provides strategic and secretarial support to the African Union for Housing Finance.

Read more: http://www.housingfinanceafrica.org/