Lands, Housing and Urban Development Minister, Judith Nabakooba, has said that 96 percent of Ugandans cannot afford decent housing especially those constructed by a developer for their families.
Nabakooba who was speaking at this year’s World Habitat Day commemoration day in Kamwokya, Kampala under the theme ‘Engaging Youth To Create A Better Urban Future’ said, with the average Ugandan earning Shs220,000 per month in urban areas and Shs168,000 in rural areas, especially the youth cannot own a decent house.
She explained that this has created an annual housing deficit of 284,000 units which arises from an average annual urban and rural demand for housing at 150,000 for urban and 143,000 for rural areas, against an annual supply of 60,000 housing units.
“The few supplies are largely informal and the few formal ones are exclusively for the high-end dwellers. This is because of a shortage of qualified professional human capital in the housing and construction sector,” she explained.
She revealed that the government is currently working on reviewing the housing policy to bridge this gap. In this new arrangement, the government will support financial housing institutions to make rates affordable to young people and establish a mortgage refinancing company to address the unfavourable terms of housing finance debt.
“We are working on the other modalities to increase access to non-bank housing financing by facilitating the creation of housing cooperatives,” she stressed.
The minister said that there will be a policy reversal for the National Housing and Construction Company to refocus it towards its original intention of providing affordable housing.
In the same vein, the government is working on the National Housing Policy implementation plan and attainment plan to operationalize the National Housing Policy of 2016.
“We shall compel urban centers and cities to adopt high-density construction designs as a strategy to optimise housing land under the condominium arrangement,” she said.
Low-income earners, the majority of which are young people, are encouraged to join and participate in housing development schemes such as special purpose saving schemes such as Saccos.
She pledged on behalf of the government to provide incentives such as land to potential local investors to manufacture the usually imported building materials. “More support should be directed towards existing suppliers of local building materials and add value to them.”
Mr Aldo Olwoch, the National Coordinator at Habitat for Humanity, said with many youths abandoning the rural areas for urban areas such as Kampala, it is inevitable for population pressure to mount on the city.
“Youth migrate from the rural areas and come to the city to settle but they do not have jobs. They in turn end up staying within the informal settlements and slums,” he said.
Iki-Iki County Member of Parliament Robert Kasolo appealed to the government to address the housing deficit by engaging different stakeholders in the housing sector to make rates affordable to young people.
The level of urbanization is increasing every day and in Uganda, the urban population growth rate is 5.2 percent higher than the 2.7 percent national population growth rate.
According to the World Bank report of 2023, at least 41.7 percent of the urban population in Uganda are living in slums.
Statistics at the global level indicate that in 2050, the urban population especially in slum areas will grow up to 75 percent.
