Urban Housing: Where things went wrong

The fast growing urban population in Cameroon is in dire need of housing as demand largely supersedes supply.

Cameroon’s urban statistics are surely an indication of the need to address one of the thorny issues affecting the country; housing.

With an annual population growth rate of 2.6 per cent, and an annual urbanisation growth rate of 6.5 per cent, Cameroon is today rated at about 54 per cent urbanised.

This state of affairs has incidentally given birth to a looming challenge; in fact, one that is fast becoming an emergency.

There is serious need to provide housing to this growing and urbanising population, almost half of which live in informal dwellings and settlements.

In Cameroon, an estimated 53 per cent of households own their own homes, 30 per cent tenants and 11 per cent are accommodated free of charge. It takes a fortune to build a house in Cameroon let alone in the urban areas.

The situation is worsened by the escalating cost of building material. The consequences are telling.

Many houses shooting up in the major cities of the country are very low qualities even though a few lucrative ones can be identified in some high-class areas.

This situation leaves no one indifferent as government struggles to come up with policies that can help overcome the housing deficit (demand versus supply) estimated at over 10,000 units a year.

It is estimated that over one million homes will need to be constructed in the next five to ten years if the growing urban population most adequately be housed.

Douala and Yaounde alone need not less than 300,000 new homes where annual demand for housing in the lower and upper classes is estimated at 10 per cent.

The housing market in Cameroon is however known not to be well developed whereby the sector was virtually abandoned in the hands of State-owned corporations, notably; Cameroon Real Estate Corporation (Société Immobilière du Cameroun or SIC), founded in October 1952.

SIC is said to have set as a target to build 100 000 homes by 2022; 30,000 of which have been built so far.

Crédit Foncier du Cameroun, a building and loan association, is the top mortgage bank and provides funds for social housing to individuals and developers.

Unfortunately, the results have remained mitigated.

Other actors, most of them government structures involved in urban housing include; Maetur which has as mission to acquire and develop land and in turn sell to buyer at affordable rates and MIPROMALO which has been struggling to promote the use of local material in the housing sector but remains unsatisfied with the results considering that initiatives both public and private involved in low-cost housing have not been able to totally embrace the idea.

That notwithstanding, it is important to note that the number of private developers is increasing.

Some have barely expressed the desire while others are already into the business; a case in point being the Options for Homes in Cameroon, a local subsidiary of a Canadian Housing company that have been providing low-cost houses in Limbe.

Most private developers like to build and sell houses to the upper middle-income and high-end market through the BOT (Build, Operate and Transfer) model.

Some of them have been partnering with municipalities to build affordable housing.

In spite of all these efforts, problems of urban housing remain a hard nut to crack but offer a big opportunity to establish partnerships across the housing value chain to meet the country’s increasing demand