Panel 90: Challenges of and Engagements in Urban Housing in Africa

For many decades now, most African states have been challenged with rapid urbanisation rates fuelled by rural-urban migration processes and natural population growth at the same time, resulting in millions of people living in precarious housing conditions. The ongoing massive, quantitative as well as qualitative housing crisis has long-term negative consequences both for the people directly affected and for societal development processes in general. But the challenges of the housing crisis haven’t been met by proper responses, and all too often city development policies remain bonded with previous and inadequate institutions and their corresponding measurements. In recent years, nevertheless, new and much more diversified housing strategies have been applied to target a broader and growing group, the urban marginalised population. These approaches provide housing through a variety of different land allocation systems, building materials and techniques, and financial mechanisms, including traditional and microcredit systems, and combine both external and internal efforts and ideas. In doing so, it is absolutely essential to make sure that people’s own priorities are considered at every stage of the process, which leads to the overlaying question of housing standards and adequacy. The panel will deal with this question and will discuss different empirically surveyed (and partly quite successful) approaches in the field of urban housing.