Affordable Housing in Ghana

Affordable

Housing

in Ghana

SECTOR STUDY

List of abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Executive summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Research approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Views on affordable housing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Understanding Ghana’s housing and demand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Trends in types of housing (2000 to 2014) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Housing materials (external walling). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Housing types by occupancy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Housing tenure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Estimated market volume for affordable housing in Ghana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Interesting areas for affordable housing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Affordable housing interventions in Ghana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

State and quasi-state interventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Non-state housing interventions – housing cooperatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Tema Housing Cooperative (THC) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Private sector interventions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Blue Rose Ltd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Tamale Affordable Housing Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

TAMSUF Affordable Housing Project in Ashaiman Municipality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Addressing the challenges of affordable housing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Size of the affordable housing market . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

The housing value chain. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Home extension, improvement and completion schemes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Maintenance and retroﬁtting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Construction of new units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Standardisation of labour and local building materials. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Matrix of business opportunities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Strategies for affordable housing delivery. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Labour and materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Land supply and location. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Financing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Urban infrastructure and municipal services. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

CONTENT

Customer and value proposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Financing mechanisms available for affordable housing . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Self-ﬁnancing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Loans from informal borrowing, non-ﬁnancial institutions and banks . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Mortgages from banks and non-bank institutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Remittances. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Public budgetary allocations, subsidies and collaborative efforts . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Key stakeholders in the affordable housing market . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Annex 1: Available Literature on Housing in Ghana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

Annex 2: Housing interventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

The Inclusive Business Action Network

(IBAN) promotes inclusive business

globally – by supporting the scale and

replication of inclusive business mo-

dels and engaging all different types

of stakeholders. To trigger collective

action IBAN ‘connects the dots’ between

the vast number of businesses, existing

initiatives, networks and stakeholders

around the world. On a global, regional

and national level, it facilitates access

to knowledge and information, enables

peerlearning and exchange formats and

fosters partnerships.

INCLUSIVE BUSINESS ACTION NETWORK (IBAN)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

With this report, IBAN commissioned three Ghanaian affordable housing experts, Sarfoh,

Kwadwo Ohene, Kavaarpuo, Godwin and Ayitio, Joseph to conduct a study on the current

stage of the sector.

EXPERTS

Experts on inclusive business and affordable housing contributed to this publication,

providing their feedback and also sharing their experience. We are particularly grateful to

Alfred Berkoh, Ellen Oteng-Nsiah, Tony Asare, Farouk Braimah and Maja Rotter.

CAHF Centre for Affordable Housing Finance

GAMA Greater Accra Metropolitan Area

GHL Ghana Home Loans Ltd

GHS Ghanaian Cedi

GIZ Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH

GLSS Ghana Living Standards Survey

GREDA Ghana Real Estate Developers’ Association

GSS Ghana Statistical Service

HC:Y Housing cost to income ratio

IBAN Inclusive Business Action Network

MWRWH Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing

NBFI Non-bank ﬁnancial institution

PHC Population and Housing Census

R&D Research and development

SADA Savannah Accelerated Development Authority

SHC State Housing Corporation

SSNIT Social Security and National Insurance Trust

SUF Slum Upgrading Facility (UN-HABITAT)

TAMSUF Tema Ashaiman Municipal Slum Upgrading Facility

TCCU Tamale Cooperative Credit Union

THC Tema Housing Cooperative

UESP Urban Environmental Sanitation Project

UN-HABITAT United Nations Human Settlements Programme

USAID United States Agency for International Development

ABBREVIATIONS

BOX 1 Policy view on affordable housing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

BOX 2 Stakeholder views on affordable housing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

BOX 3 Key ﬁgures for Ghana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11

BOX 4 Making housing affordable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

BOX 5 Methodologies for estimating housing stock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

BOXES

FIGURE 1 Percentage changes in demographics and housing stock . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12

FIGURE 2 Rooms occupied by households in urban and rural areas (2000 to 2010) . . . . .17

FIGURE 3 Housing affordability pyramid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

FIGURE 4 Housing affordability in Ghana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

FIGURE 5 A two-bedroom terrace house. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

FIGURE 6 The housing value chain. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31

FIGURE 7 Cost components of a typical house built by the formal private sector. . . . . . 33

FIGURE 8 Identiﬁed housing sector stakeholders in Ghana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47

TABLE 1 Existing housing stock and households in 2010. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13

TABLE 2 Trends in housing typology in Ghana. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14

TABLE 3 Summary of the main materials used for external walling. . . . . . . . . . . . . .15

TABLE 4 Room occupancy in different localities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16

TABLE 5 Sleeping rooms per household in various localities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17

TABLE 6 Housing tenure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

TABLE 7 Estimated housing need . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19

TABLE 8 Analysis of housing need (2000 to 2025) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

TABLE 9 Value of the affordable housing market . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21

TABLE 10 Housing expenditure by quintile group and type of locality. . . . . . . . . . . . 22

TABLE 11 Annual income and expenditure on rent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

TABLE 12 Affordability determined using mean household income from GLSS 6,

indexed to 2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

TABLE 13 Matrix of business opportunities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

TABLE 14 Top ﬁve sources of household loans in 2008 and 2014* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

TABLE 15 Purposes for which loans were taken out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

TABLE 16 Loan portfolio of the top four NBFIs in 2013 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

TABLE 17 The Ghanaian mortgage market in 2013. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

TABLE 18 Interest rates on mortgages of selected banks in 2013 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

TABLE 19 Institutional arrangement of the affordable housing sector . . . . . . . . . . . 48

TABLE 20 Summary of major government housing initiatives since Ghana's independence 52

TABLE 21 Changes in Ghana's demographics and housing stock (1960–2010) . . . . . . . 53

TABLE 22 Summary of key barriers/enablers for affordable and inclusive housing projects 54

FIGURES AND TABLES

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Access to decent and adequate housing is often considered as a basic human right.

However, low-income households face difﬁculties in accessing not only affordable

housing solutions but also housing of good quality. In Ghana both the informal and for-

mal sector supply of housing continues to be inadequate to meet the increasing demand.

This has resulted in acute and persistent housing deﬁcits — a situation that presents a

complex mix of both challenges and opportunities. This report sets out the major issues

affecting affordable housing provision and seeks to present a business case for formal

private sector interventions in affordable housing in the country.

Housing conditions in Ghana

Housing supply is dominated by informal sector

operations with over 90% of the country’s housing

stock built incrementally by homeowners and

small-scale contractors which typically takes 5

to 15 years to complete. A signiﬁcant proportion

of the houses built in this way are of a typology

known colloquially as compound houses. In urban

areas one in two households dwell in this kind of

communal housing type. Another signiﬁcant ty-

pology is detached bungalow-type housing, which

in 2010 constituted 28.7% of the country’s total

housing stock.

There are notable differences with respect to the

building materials used across localities. In rural

areas, the building envelope of 55% of houses are

either mud or earth-based, whereas 85% of houses

in urban areas are sandcrete. Sandcrete is often

associated with modernity and there is a gradual

transition in the use to sandcrete based materials

as it is associated with modernity. As sandcrete

becomes more popular, local building materials

are being used less and less. This is problematic

because using local earth and clay building ma-

terials reduces housebuilding costs and reduces

post-construction costs on occupants given these

materials’ energy-saving properties.

In terms of house tenure, two in ﬁve households

in Accra, occupy rented accommodation while

some 27% of households live in rent-free arrange-

ments. In rural areas, three out of ﬁve households

own their dwellings. One-third of households in

both rural and urban areas occupy more than

two sleeping rooms while about 2.7 million urban

households occupy single-rooms. This situation

combined with the extent of rent-free occupancy

and the national average of 4.4 persons per house-

hold is indicative of serious overcrowding.

Affordable housing market and potentials

Housing affordability

Housing sold on the formal real estate market is

beyond the ﬁnancial means of most households,

with only about 1% of households able to afford

the cheapest houses offered by formal developers.

For example, in 2015 the cheapest house cost USD

24,297. After paying the 20% deposit, the mortgagee

is required to make a monthly payment of USD 245

over a 20-year period and must have a monthly

income of USD 612 to quality. Meanwhile, monthly

income of households average USD 347.

Bank lending rates are standing at around 30% per

annum and thus housing ﬁnance is out of reach of

virtually all but those on high incomes households.

For example, average household incomes reported

in 2014 stood at GHS 16,644 (GSS 2014). Using the

housing cost-to-income metric, households able to

spend three times their annual incomes would be

able to afford accommodation worth USD 14,000.

Customer and value proposition

For the report, a limited survey of selected stake-

holders was carried out exploring what constitu-

tes ‘affordable’ housing. For private developers,

affordability is both a function of the quality of

the building fabric and the price relative to the

income of a target group. For ﬁnanciers, it is linked

to a certain, arbitrarily-set price point related to

the cost of housing. For low-income households,

it is determined by price, build quality and loca-

tion. These different perspectives suggest that

affordability means different things to different

people. Affordability is thus seen differently by

different stakeholders depending on their function

along the housing value chain.

owever, this level of production only addres-

ses about 35% of the annual demand for new

housing (UN-HABITAT 2008). Given that the

recent boom in the real estate market distinctly

favours high-income households, which constitute

only 5% of the population, this deﬁcit appears to

mainly affect the larger part of the housing market

that is persistently overlooked by market forces.

Previous approaches of successive governments to

directly provide housing have seldom achieved their

objectives. With both formal and informal housing

delivery inadequately meeting demand of all market

segments, the market presents both challenges and

opportunities particularly for low income housing

which is not addressed by the market.

This report presents the essential issues affecting

the provision of affordable housing in Ghana with

the aim of making a business case for the partici-

pation of multiple private and non-state actors and

interests in a more concerted fashion. Drawing on

Ghana’s 2015 National Housing Policy and on the

perspectives of key stakeholders representing diffe-

rent interests in the housing sector, the report pro-

vides a contextualised understanding of affordable

housing.

The report makes use of various estimations of the

housing demand situation and identiﬁes the types

of affordable housing available on the market and

the ﬁnancing mechanisms employed to deliver

lower-cost housing. Importantly, the report consi-

ders the segment of the housing sub-market that

can catalyse changes in the delivery of and access

to affordable housing. The report’s contents also

provided the background for dialogues at the three-

day workshop Affordable Housing in Ghana, held on

28–30 June 2016 and organised in partnership with

the World Bank. It is hoped that the contents of this

report prompt further discussions on this subject,

provide the ingredients to support sustainable inter-

ventions and introduce key players to the risks and

opportunities associated with the affordable housing

sub-market. Moreover, it is hoped that the combined

impact of the report and workshops fosters part-

nerships that result in the development of sustain-

able and scalable business solutions to address the

challenges of the affordable housing market.

Ghana’s real estate market is largely based on informal sector activities

— both for

supplying and allocating housing units. The housing market currently appears to be

experiencing signiﬁcant investment and growth, arising from the country’s econo-

mic growth, oil discovery and exploration, and remittances. The numerous construc-

tion cranes visible over major cities like Accra, Tema and Kumasi serve to reinforce

this notion of a country on the up. Housing supply has undoubtedly enjoyed positi-

ve growth rates over the years. In 2008 supply was estimated at between 25,000 to

40,000 units per annum, representing a threefold increase on the previous decade.

Introduction

Qualitative research methods are useful for understanding the state of the housing

sector in Ghana. In qualitative inquiry, the aim is to explore a phenomenon in-depth,

which aligns with the objectives of this report. To better understand the dynamics of

affordable housing and propose practical recommendations, the authors purpose-

fully selected units of inquiry and data sources that allowed them us to learn from

and critically review housing interventions in the country. This involved undertaking

a desk study of secondary data – namely policies, programmes, projects, institutio-

nal frameworks, position papers and market reports on housing in Ghana. A list of

key literature on affordable housing in the country is provided in Appendix 1.

Research approach

he authors of the report, which is largely

based on the above-mentioned desk study,

drew on relevant literature to establish its

conceptual basis for affordable housing. This re-

view was supplemented with limited primary data

gathered from carefully selected stakeholders in

interviews that sought to further contextualise and

validate the conceptual basis established as well

as to generate inputs for the affordable housing

workshop. To develop understanding and thus

establish the framework for the formulation of

appropriate solutions, primary data respondents

were selected using parameters such as income

and socio-economic status, and education levels.

The proﬁles of these respondents are provided

later in this report. Participants in the primary data

collection exercise were sampled loosely

from

housing developers, mortgage ﬁnanciers, public

policy experts and slum residents. In total, ﬁve

slum residents (one from each of the major slums

in Accra), one housing ﬁnance company represen-

tative, one formal private developer, one public

ofﬁcer and two housing experts were interviewed

to augment the ﬁndings of the literature review.

ffordable housing is a concept that is

heavily inﬂuenced by the local context and

is therefore not easy to subject to global

norms. For some, its deﬁnition is a function of

household income and expenditure, benchmar-

ked not to exceed a ceiling relative to the overall

household income or expenditure, averaging 30%

(O’Dell, W. O., Smith M. and White D. 2004). However,

this varies between countries – for example, Cana-

da until the 1980s used a 25% household income

threshold (Hulchanski 2005). In India, a ceiling

of 40% is applied (Jones Lang LaSalle 2012), with

affordability measured according to the economic

status of a household. A variation of this deﬁnition

looks at how to make housing accessible to the

poor, who are deﬁned as those with a household

income threshold of under USD 2 per day.

Others

deﬁne affordable housing as housing with costs

at or below a ﬁxed price point, sometimes arbit-

rarily set, and deemed to be accessible to those

on lower incomes (Angel 2001). A variation on this

deﬁnition uses public subsidies as a factor for

determining what constitutes affordable housing

(which is deﬁned in certain quarters as low-cost

housing that requires supply-side subsidies).

Elsewhere, affordable housing is broadly deﬁned

as housing that is adequate in quality and location

and does not cost so much that it leaves its occu-

pants unable to meet their other basic living costs

or threatens their enjoyment of other basic human

rights (McBride et al. 2011). Here, other elements of

affordability come into play: quality, income, locati-

on, costs, and enjoyment of basic human rights. In

this regard, affordable housing is deﬁned in some

cases to be housing of a speciﬁc size (determined

either by number of rooms or space) or of mini-

mum quality.

Box 2 below presents the differing views of what

constitutes affordable housing expressed by a

selection of interviewed stakeholders.

There are several different understandings of what constitutes affordable

housing, who is entitled to it and what role different stakeholders are required

to play in order to deliver housing and allocate it to beneﬁciaries. Box 1 below

contains the 2015 National Housing Policy’s deﬁnition of affordable housing.

Views on affordable housing

The ability of a household to spend up to thirty

percent (30%) of its gross annual income on

the rent or purchase price of housing where

the rent or purchase price includes applicable

taxes and insurances and utilities. When the

annual carrying cost of a home exceeds thirty

percent (30%) of household income, then it is

considered unaffordable for that household.

MWRWH 2015, p. V

NATIONAL POLICY PERSPECTIVET

Box 1 • POLICY VIEW ON AFFORDABLE HOUSING

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1110

A PRIVATE DEVELOPER’S VIEW

‘Affordability is relative and hence affordable

housing is decent accommodation, with at least

wet areas, that meets the target group’s needs.

The housing must have as a minimum a decent

toilet and bath and its cost must be relative to

the ﬁnancial capacity of the target group.’

Managing director of a private propertydeveloper

A FINANCIER’S VIEW

‘An affordable house in Ghana is a house whose

cost ranges from GHS 100,000 to GHS 200,000,

taking into consideration people’s incomes and

the feasibility of the construction costs. A house

is only affordable because people have the

money to buy, or can access a mortgage to buy,

the property.’

Technical ofﬁcer of a mortgage provider

Box 2 • STAKEHOLDER VIEWS ON AFFORDABLE HOUSING

In this report the deﬁnition of affordable housing

as ‘housing solutions which are priced or ﬁnanced

in a way that enables low-income households … to

also be able to afford other basic needs’ (GIZ 2014,

p. 9) is used. The low-income households referred

to here are those that fall within the bottom two

income quintiles. Though used more loosely in

this report, the concept of affordability is linked

speciﬁcally with households occupying the base of

the economic pyramid — i.e. low-income earners.

In this case, housing solutions must be modelled

in relation to the purchasing power of prospective

owners or renters. This introduces ﬂexibility into

the deﬁnition, as incomes and wages are often

location-speciﬁc. As such, a solution appropriate

for one area might not necessarily work in ano-

ther. Other locational issues; proximity to social

and civic services, economic opportunities and

social networks are critical in the decisions of low

income earners in choosing to reside in a particu-

lar neighbourhood. The element of basic needs is

equally important with regard to making housing

accessible. Houses should not be priced in a way

that compromises the resident households’ ability

to satisfy their other needs.

Research on affordable housing in Ghana is often

framed in terms of the public provision of af-

fordable housing and the mediatory role of state

institutions, with researchers considering whether

public policy would be able to alleviate the preca-

rious housing situation of the urban poor. With the

issues framed in these terms, the resulting studies

have tended to focus on the state’s attempts to

provide housing for low-income households, the

existing public ﬁnancing options (Bank of Ghana

2006) and the inﬂuence of state policy in achieving

those aims. For instance, some scholars (Kona-

du-Agyeman 2001 and Sarfoh 2010) have examined

Ghana’s housing policy experience from the

pre-colonial era to contemporary Ghana, looking

at adopted policies and programmes in the light

of international discourse and the core–periphery

argument versus neoliberal and communitarian

approaches. Arku (2009) investigated the economic

logic of housing policies from 1929 to 1966 and

observed that colonial governments seldom acted

to provide housing for indigenous peoples except

occasionally for political and social motives. For

Sarfoh (2010), the direction of housing policy over

the years has been characterised by uncertainty

owing to (a) shifts in the orientation of governance

and the economic paradigms of global players and

(b) the strategic positioning of local actors as glo-

bal norms were reinterpreted. This uncertainty in

housing policy direction is epitomised by the coun-

try’s repeatedly unsuccessful efforts to develop a

comprehensive housing policy prior to 2015, when

a national housing policy was ﬁnally promulgated.

Others have considered the relationship between

who is building and what is being built in urban

Ghana (Tipple et al. 1998, and Korboe 1992). On the

question of who is building, Tipple et al. assert that

the motivation for house construction in urban

Ghana is to guarantee security of tenure. Other

studies, such as Karley and Akomea 2007 and

Obeng-Oddom 2011, examine the prospects and

challenges in the real estate sector. A key conside

ration in most of the existing studies is affordabi-

lity and the associated strategies for improving

access to affordable housing, albeit without a

clariﬁcation of the competing notions of this con-

cept (Boamah 2010). Awanyo (2009) draws attention

to the need to leverage already ubiquitous in-situ

building strategies, as a way of meeting housing

space demands among low-income earners. For

Tipple (1996) it is house extension that offers the

potential for affordable and sustainable housing.

In this approach, as a minimum the wet areas

(kitchen, bath and toilet) and at least one sleeping

area are completed for use, and options for later

expansion incorporated.

However, this kind of

piecemeal approach tends to lock up capital over a

considerable time.

Other studies mainly carried out by international

organisations attempt to provide a panoramic view

of the sector (e.g. CAHF, 2013; UN-Habitat, 2010;

UN-Habitat, 2011; World Bank, 2009; and UN-HAB-

ITAT, 2004). These present overviews of the housing

sector that examine the issues in aggregate

(covering land issues, ﬁnance, policy, institutional

aspects, housing needs and interventions, among

others) rather than focus on a particular sub-sec-

tor.

These studies do not look at the housing value

chain or the socially stratiﬁed lower-scale issues

of affordable housing in Ghana that are speciﬁc to

the poor. Neither do they explore the role of the

private sector in tackling these issues. Yet, given

the private sector’s understanding of the dynamics

of affordable housing provision, the housing mar-

ket and the mediatory roles of institutions, it has

a particularly crucial role to play in policy-making

and harmonious local economic development. It

is this gap that this report attempts to address by

providing a better understanding of the affordable

housing market.

28,5 MILLION

Population

54%

Urban population (% of total)

4,5%

Urbanisation rate (in 2014)

24.2%

Population under national poverty line

GHS 8

National daily minimum wage

21.4%

Proportion of employed population in informal sector

43.8%

Population living in slums

0.25

Mortgage to GDP ratio (in 2010)

Ease of doing business ranking (out of 189)

Number of procedures to register a property

46 DAYS

Time required to register property

1.10%

Cost, as a % of property value, of registering property

Box 3 • KEY FIGURES FOR GHANA

CAHF 2015, GSS 2014, UN-Habitat 2014, and Ministry of

Local Government and Rural Development 2013.

1312

Ghana’s 2010 Population and Housing Census (PHC) recorded the country’s

population as 24.6 million, of whom approximately half live in urban areas.

The

concentration is such that the primary cities of Kumasi, Sekondi-Takoradi and Ac-

cra, all of which are in the south of the country, hold more than 28% of the coun-

try’s population.

Furthermore, housing stock, the number of households and the

number of households per house all reﬂect this trend towards urbanisation.

Understanding Ghana’s

housing and demand

igure 1 shows that both the population and

the number of households increased bet-

ween 1960 to 2000. After the turn of the mill-

ennium, the rate of population growth witnessed a

decline while the number of households continued

to increase – albeit at a slower pace, which there-

fore suggests the beginnings of a decline by 2010.

The increasing formation of new households con-

forms with the shrinking household sizes observed

over the censual years. Household sizes peaked

in 2000 at 5.1 persons per household and subse-

quently declined to 4.4 persons per household in

2010. If this reduction in household size continues

without a corresponding signiﬁcant slowdown in

population growth, and unless the current pace

of housebuilding is ramped up, the demand for

housing will remain high.

The housing situation differs greatly between the

regions in the north of the country and those in

the south, which perhaps reﬂects the development

gap existing between these two zones. Northern

regions have higher household sizes and less

housing stock compared to southern regions. Si-

milarly, there are more multifamily living arrange-

ments in the south than in the north of the coun-

try (with the exception of the Upper East region),

the south having about 50% more households per

house (see Table 1 below).

REGION

NUMBER OF

HOUSES

NUMBER OF

HOUSEHOLDS

RURAL SHARE

OF HOUSING

STOCK

HOUSEHOLDS

PER HOUSE

AVERAGE

HOUSEHOLD

SIZE

ALL REGIONS

3,392,745 5,467,136 57.7 1.6 4.4

ASHANTI

574,066 1,126,216 53.0 2.0 4.1

GREATER ACCRA

474,621 1,036,426 13.0 2.2 3.8

EASTERN

431,697 632,048 64.1 1.5 4.1

VOLTA

399,953 495,603 72.2 1.2 4.2

WESTERN

380,104 553,635 67.5 1.5 4.2

CENTRAL

346,699 526,764 61.8 1.5 4.0

BRONG-AHAFO

331,967 490,519 63.4 1.5 4.6

NORTHERN

257,311 318,119 71.3 1.2 7.7

UPPER EAST

114,034 177,631 79.2 1.6 5.8

UPPER WEST

82,293 110,175 85.4 1.3 6.2

Table 1 • EXISTING HOUSING STOCK AND HOUSEHOLDS IN 2010

Figure 1 • PERCENTAGE CHANGES IN DEMOGRAPHICS AND HOUSING STOCK

GSS 2014.

Increase in households

Population growth rate

Increase in population

Increase in housinng stock

1960-70 1970-84 1984-2000 2000-2010

Photo: VanWyckExpress/istockphoto.com

1514

he most common housing typology found

throughout Ghana is the compound house,

which accommodates multiple households

in a shared building. The data from the population

and housing censuses (2000 and 2010) and the

Ghana Living Standards Surveys (GLSS) (2008 and

2014)

show that, compared to the other housing

typologies, the share of compound housing in-

creased from 50% to nearly 70% between 2000 and

2010 (see Table 2 in which compound housing is

highlighted). This ﬁnding calls into question the

generally held notion that households, and parti-

cularly those in urban locations, prefer detached

bungalows. On the contrary, it would seem that

people’s housing preferences are ﬂexible when it

comes to the country’s housing stock. This trend

in sharing housing arrangements applies to both

urban and rural areas.

n general, the types of materials used to build

houses can help in determining whether the

properties potentially fall into the affordable

housing category. This category applies to housing

built with materials that fall below the minimum

standards stipulated in the national building re-

gulations (LI 1630) and are thus unable to protect

inhabitants from a range of hazards such as harsh

weather conditions. The building regulations deem

housing walls constructed with ‘temporary ma-

terials’ such as metal sheets, wood, thatch and

palm leaves to be sub-standard. Often, this kind of

housing is occupied by people on low incomes.

Table 3 below provides an overview of housing in

Ghana based on the types of building materials

used. However, this is not a strong measure as it

does not give any idea of the present condition of

the properties.

In rural areas, where 73% of rural households live

in dwellings built mainly with mud, housing issues

centre more on questions of quality rather than

quantity (GSS 2008). In contrast, the use of sand-

crete is more common in urban areas (see table 3

in which this highlighted in yellow). Even though

this is a singular proxy indication of housing qua-

lity, it reﬂects expenditure patterns on housing, as

urban dwellers spend on average 118% more on

housing than their rural counterparts. However, this

is not to insinuate that issues of housing quality

are speciﬁc to rural areas. On the contrary, 42.8% of

urban dwellers live in slums (UN-HABITAT, 2014).

Although landcrete, burnt bricks and bamboo are

proven building materials and their source materi-

als are readily available locally, their use is mainly

conﬁned to wall building in both rural and urban zo-

nes. Sandcrete and concrete walling dominates the

urban landscape whereas earthen material walling

is commonest in rural areas. A transition away from

earthen materials towards concrete and sandcrete

use has, however, been observed in rural areas.

TRENDS IN TYPES OF HOUSING (2000 TO 2014) HOUSING MATERIALS (EXTERNAL WALLING)

ACCRA (GAMA) OTHER URBAN ALL URBAN ALL RURAL

TYPE OF

DWELLING

GLSS 5

2008

GLSS 6

2014

GLSS 5

2008

GLSS 6

2014

PHC

2000

GLSS 5

2008

PHC

2010

GLSS 6

2014

GLSS 5 PHC

2010

GLSS 6

2014

SEPARATE HOUSE

8,5 14,9 4,8 14,1 16,0 6,0 19,3 14,3 2,4 40,1 16,4

SEMI-DETACHED

HOUSE

6,8 6,4 3,4 5,9 14,9 4,5 7,8 6,1 2,7 6,3 8,2

FLAT/APARTMENT

8,9 7,4 4,5 4,6 7,2 5,9 7,0 5,5 0,8 1,9 1,3

COMPOUND HOUSE

(ROOMS)

53,9 63,9 55,5 70,0 51,6 55,0 58,7 68,1 35,1 42,9 51,3

SEVERAL HUTS/

BUILDINGS

2,6 0,7 2,9 4,0 2,5 2,7 1,0 3,0 9,5 5,7 21,7

TENTS/IMPROVISED

HOME (KIOSK,

CONTAINER, ETC.)

2,3 3,7 0,1 0,4 0,1 0,8 0,3 1,5 0,2 0,2 0,1

LIVING QUARTERS

ATTACHED TO

OFFICE/SHOP

— 0,6 — 0,2 0,6 — — 0,3 — — 0,2

UNCOMPLETED

BUILDING

— 2,4 — 0,6 4,3 — 2,1 1,2 — 1,0 0,2

OTHERS

1,4 0,1 0,1 0,2 4,3 0,5 — 0,2 0,2 — 0,7

Source: compiled using data from GSS (2000, 2008, 2010 and 2014).

Table 2 • TRENDS IN HOUSING TYPOLOGY IN GHANA

MAIN MATERIALS

USED FOR EXTER-

NAL WALLING

ACCRA (GAMA) OTHER URBAN ALL URBAN ALL RURAL

GLSS 5

2008

GLSS 6

2014

GLSS 5

2008

GLSS 6

2014

PHC

2000

GLSS 5

2008

PHC

2010

GLSS 6

2014

PHC

2000

GLSS 5

2008

PHC

2010

GLSS 6

2014

MUD/MUD

BRICKS/EARTH

2,3 0,6 26,5 15,0 21,5 18,5 12,4 10,4 74,5 72,9 60,5 56,9

WOOD

7,5 6,5 0,5 0,6 5,4 2,8 4,8 2,5 2,7 1,0 1,8 0,7

METAL/SHEET/

SLATE/ASBESTOS

0,5 1,0 0,1 1,0 0,9 0,2 1,0 1,0 0,3 0,1 0,5 0,5

STONE

0,2 0,2 0,5 - 0,3 0,4 0,2 0,1 0,2 0,3 0,2 0,1

BURNT BRICKS

0,3 0,1 0,8 0,4 2,0 0,6 0,7 0,3 1,1 0,6 0,6 1,3

CEMENT BLOCKS/

CONCRETE

88,4 91,5 69,4 82,5 65,3 75,7 78,5 85,3 16,6 21,8 32,1 39,7

LANDCRETE

— — — 0,4 2,9 — 1,2 0,3 2,6 3,1 2,5 0,3

BAMBOO/PALM

LEAVES/THATCH

(GRASS/RAFFIA/

OTHERS)

— 0,1 — 0,1 1,6 — 1,3 0,1 2,0 0,1 1,7 0,5

Source: compiled using data from GSS (2000, 2008, 2010 and 2014).

Table 3 • SUMMARY OF THE MAIN MATERIALS USED FOR EXTERNAL WALLING

1716

he level of overcrowding in Ghana’s

housing, both in urban and rural areas, is

increasingly becoming a concern. Half of

the country’s total number of households dwell

in single rooms, making single-room occupancy

the commonest occupancy type, and over 75% of

households occupy either one or two rooms (see

the green-shaded rows in Tables 4 and 5). Given

the average household size in Ghana stands at 4.4

persons, it can be inferred that single- and dou-

ble-room dwellings suffer moderate to signiﬁcant

levels of overcrowding.

The situation is more acute when one considers

occupancy in terms of sleeping rooms. The 2010

PHC acknowledges differences between room

occupancy per household and sleeping-room

occupancy per household, with the latter recording

much higher ﬁgures. Some households have two

or more rooms but only use one for sleeping. The

second room usually serves as the living room

and/or kitchen.

The analysis of the number of rooms occupied

compared to the size of the household reﬂects the

increasing pressure on the existing housing stock.

HOUSING TYPES BY OCCUPANCY

PROPORTION

OF ROOMS

OCCUPIED PER

HOUSEHOLD

ACCRA (GAMA) OTHER URBAN ALL URBAN ALL RURAL

PHC

2000

GLSS 5

2008

GLSS 6

2014

GLSS 5

2008

GLSS 6

2014

PHC

2000

GLSS 5

2008

PHC

2010

GLSS 6

2014

PHC

2000

GLSS 5

2008

PHC

2010

GLSS 6

2014

ONE ROOM

45,2 53,6 42,7 60,6 58,5 47,5 58,3 51,4 53,5 29,5 51,9 35,9 49,9

TWO ROOMS

33,2 30,8 35,4 22,8 22,4 24,0 25,5 24,6 26,5 23,7 26,2 25,1 26,7

THREE ROOMS

6,7 8,3 9,0 8,7 9,1 8,9 8,6 9,1 9,1 15,4 12,5 14,7 10,7

FOUR ROOMS

5,5 3,0 6,4 4,3 5,0 6,0 3,8 5,6 5,5 9,9 4,7 9,0 6,1

FIVE ROOMS

4,0 4,3 6,5 3,6 5,0 4,3 3,8 3,3 5,5 6,7 4,7 5,6 6,6

SIX ROOMS

1,9 4,3 6,5 3,6 5,0 2,7 3,8 2,2 5,5 4,6 4,7 3,3 6,6

SEVEN ROOMS

1,1 4,3 6,5 3,6 5,0 1,7 3,8 1,4 5,5 3,0 4,7 2,2 6,6

EIGHT ROOMS

0,8 4,3 6,5 3,6 5,0 1,3 3,8 0,8 5,5 2,2 4,7 1,6 6,6

NINE OR MORE

ROOMS

1,6 4,3 6,5 3,6 5,0 3,6 3,8 1,4 5,5 5,0 4,7 0,9 6,6

Source: compiled using data from GSS (2000, 2008, 2010 and 2014).

Table 4 • ROOM OCCUPANCY IN DIFFERENT LOCALITIES

PROPORTION OF

SLEEPING ROOMS

OCCUPIED PER

HOUSEHOLD

URBAN RURAL

PHC 2000 PHC 2010 PHC 2000 PHC 2010

ONE ROOM

61,9 61,4 39,1 45,5

TWO ROOMS

17,5 22,2 25 26,9

THREE ROOMS

7,6 7,8 14,5 13,1

FOUR ROOMS

4,6 4,2 8,3 6,8

FIVE ROOMS

2,6 2 4,6 3,2

SIX ROOMS

1,7 1,1 3,1 1,9

SEVEN ROOMS

1 0,5 1,8 0,9

EIGHT ROOMS

0,8 0,6 1,2 0,6

NINE OR MORE

ROOMS

2,3 0 2,4 1

Source: compiled using data from GSS (2000 and 2010).

Table 5 • SLEEPING ROOMS PER HOUSEHOLD IN VARIOUS LOCALITIES

Source: produced by the authors using data from GSS (2008 and 2014).

Figure 2 • ROOMS OCCUPIED BY HOUSEHOLDS IN URBAN AND RURAL AREAS 2008 TO 2014

All rural

Other urban

All urban

GAMA

2008-2014

1 ROOM 2 ROOMS 3 ROOMS 4 ROOMS 5+ ROOMS

2008-2014 2008-2014 2008-2014 2008-2014

1918

he overview of housing tenure in Ghana is

quite revealing, with urban and rural areas

displaying marked differences. Whereas

two-thirds of households own their homes in rural

areas, only a third do in urban areas. Urban areas

have more renters (one-third) than rural areas

(one-tenth). A third tenure type, not uncommon in

Ghanaian society, is rent-free status, which cons-

titutes around a quarter of households’ tenure in

both urban and rural areas. The share of housing

owned by relatives (33%) relates strongly with the

proportion of households with rent-free tenure

(27%). The higher ratio of rural households living in

dwellings owed by relatives (60%) reﬂects the ‘fa-

mily housing’ context whereby the extended family

is able to secure a cohabitation arrangement on

the basis of ﬁlial relationships and family patriar-

chal ties.

It is reasonable to assume that a large segment

of the households in need of affordable housing

interventions are those that are presently in rent-

free accommodation or are perching or squatting.

On the basis of this assumption, it is possible to

deduce that in 2010, 27% of households required

affordable housing solutions.

HOUSING TENURE

HOUSING

UNITS BY

TENURE TYPE

AND LOCALITY

ACCRA (GAMA) OTHER URBAN ALL URBAN ALL RURAL

PHC

2000

GLSS 5

2008

GLSS 6

2014

PHC

2000

GLSS 5

2008

GLSS 6

2014

PHC

2000

GLSS 5

2008

PHC

2010

GLSS 6

2014

PHC

2000

GLSS 5

2008

PHC

2010

GLSS 6

2014

OWNING

38.2 26.6 35.2 41.4 25.8 31.7 41.4 26.1 32.7 32.8 71.7 58.7 65.5 62.1

RENTING

40.7 45.9 41.0 35.8 38.5 39.3 35.8 40.9 45.0 39.9 9.9 9.1 13.5 10.7

RENT-FREE

19.9 24.8 23.1 21.6 35.1 28.6 21.6 31.7 21.2 26.8 17.6 32.0 20.3 27.0

PERCHING

1.2 2.7 0.5 1.2 0.6 0.2 1.2 1.3 0.5 0.3 0.8 0.3 0.4 0.2

SQUATTING

— — 0.3 — — 0.2 — — 0.4 0.2 — — 0.1 0.1

Source: compiled using data from GSS (2008 and 2014).

Table 6 • HOUSING TENURE

stimates of the housing deﬁcit in Ghana vary

widely, due in part to confusion arising from

what deﬁnes and how to distinguish between

a house and a dwelling unit. Another factor is the

difﬁculty in determining the quantity of housing

supplied through informally self-managed pro-

cesses. The data in Table 7 below exempliﬁes this

uncertainty regarding overall housing needs and

unmet demand.

ESTIMATED MARKET VOLUME FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING

IN GHANA

Source: compiled using data from the UN-HABITAT (2011), the Ministry

of Water Resources, Works and Housing (2015) and GSS (2005).

SOURCE TOTAL HOUSING STOCK ANNUAL SUPPLY DEFICIT/NEED ANNUAL NEED

GOVERNMENT OF

GHANA (1987)

— — — 101,800

AMOA-MENSAH (2003)

— 37,000 — 90,000

UN-HABITAT (2004)

2,181,975 — — 1,010,000 by 2010

GHANA STATISTICAL

SERVICE (2005)

2,181,797 — —

138,085 units per annum;

3,500,000 by 2025

MAHAMA AND ANTWI

(2006)

— 25,000

300,000,

1,200,000 by 2005

130,000

ASIAMAH (2006)

— — 800,000 —

BANK OF GHANA (2007)

2,181,975 —

1,500,000 in 2000 with an

additional 665,000 by 2010

—

KARLEY (2008)

2,200,000 25,000–40,000 500,000 70,000

UN-HABITAT (2010)

— 250,000 — 133,000

GOVERNMENT OF

GHANA (2015)

3,392,745 —

4,000,000 rooms between

2000 and 2010; 5,700,000

rooms by 2020.

—

Table 7 • ESTIMATED HOUSING NEED

2120

What is clear is that housing supply has fallen far

behind housing needs over the years. The esti-

mated current annual deﬁcit ranges from 106,806

to 170,751 units.

Assuming the upper estimates

hold true, the country will have an aggregate

deﬁcit of 7.2 million rooms by 2020 (MWRWH 2015).

A substantial proportion of this deﬁcit will be in

affordable housing, which is needed in some cases

to reduce crowding – due to rent-free status or

less than adequate dwellings – and in others to

replace dilapidated buildings.

Another way of estimating the affordable housing

market is to extrapolate from expenditure on

housing

, assuming that those in the lowest two

income quintiles are in need of affordable housing.

Table 9 shows that there has been substantial

growth in housing expenditure, although a large

gap exists between urban and rural households:

of the total of GHS 814 million spent on housing

in 2008, GHS 575 million was spent in urban areas

and about half of that was spent in rural areas. By

2014 the total spend on housing had grown to GHS

5.997 billion, of which GHS 4.6 billion was spent in

urban areas. As such, spending on housing in rural

areas was only one third of that in urban areas.

Housing expenditure as a share of total household

expenditure grew threefold between 2008 and

2014, with housing now constituting 11% of house-

hold expenditure for the lowest two quintiles and

rising marginally to 13% for the highest income

quintile.

Using the proportion of expenditure spent on

housing to calculate how much potential income is

available to those investing in affordable housing

provides a total ﬁgure of GHS 1.2 billion, an equiva-

lent of USD 536 million (as at 31 December 2013).

The estimate includes spending on housing con-

struction, the extension of existing buildings, and

rent, maintenance and utility payments. It excludes

outgoings for furnishings, ﬁxtures and ﬁttings, and

other consumables associated with the occupation

of the housing. Considered together, the estimated

existing housing deﬁcit and level of expenditure on

housing serve to highlight the huge and untapped

opportunities awaiting the private sector.

Even though there has been a boom in housing

construction, investments have mainly targeted

high-income, low-risk borrowers. The amount of

investment is signiﬁcant, with mortgages worth a

total of USD 180 million taken out as at 2013 (Adu

2014). However, the impact of these new-builds on

the overall housing stock has not been as signiﬁ-

cant as the combined output of individual midd-

le- to low-income households whose incremental

approaches to building have dominated total

housing supply (Boamah 2014).

Based on the average household incomes reported

in the GLSS 6 (indexed to 2016), households can

afford USD 14,000 at house cost: income(HC:Y) ratio

of 3. If they can manage to spend more on housing,

at an HC:Y of 5, they could reach up to USD 23,000.

Table 12 shows that, in rural areas, households can

afford to spend USD 9,000 at an HC:Y of 3 on either

renting or purchasing housing. Rising inﬂation and

the persistently falling value of the Ghanaian Cedi

(GHS) reduce how much households are able to

spend on housing.

Item Figures

Total number of households

6,601,500

Households forming quintiles 1 and 2

2,640,600

Annual household expenditure by those in quintile 1

GHS 347.7

Annual household expenditure by those in quintile 2

GHS530

Proportion of housing expenditure for quintiles 1 and 2 in 2014

19.5%

Total amount spent by quintiles 1 and 2 on housing

GHS 1,158,827,310

Source: compiled using data from the GSS (2014).

Table 9 • VALUE OF THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING MARKET

Source: GSS (2005), and Population Data Analysis Reports, Vol. 2, p. 58, Table 1.57.

PROJECTED

INDICATORS

2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 INCREASE

TOTAL POPULATION

18,912,079 21,134,500

23,458,808

(24,658,823)

25,950,150 28,511,828 31,311,432 —

HOUSEHOLD POPULA-

TION (98.7% OF TOTAL

POPULATION)

18,666,222 20,859,752 23,153,843 25,612,798 28,141,174 30,904,383 —

ASSUMED HOUSE-

HOLD SIZE

5.1 5.2

5.2

(4.4)

5.2 5.2 5.2 —

PROJECTED HOUSING

NEED

3,660,044 4,011,491 4,452,662 4,925,538 5,411,764 5,943,151 —

ACTUAL HOUSES

NEEDED (1.7 HOUSE-

HOLDS/ HOUSE)

2,152,967 2,359,700 2,619,213 2,897,375 3,183,390 3,459,971 —

INCREASED NEW

HOUSING NEED

— 206,733 259,513 278,162 286,015 312,581 1,343,004

DILAPIDATED HOUSES

— 327,296 353,955 392,882 492,554 541,176 2,107,863

TOTAL ADDITIONAL

HOUSING NEEDED

— 534,029 613,468 671,044 778,569 853,757 3,450,867

PERCENT INCREASE

— 24.8 26.0 25.6 26.9 26.8 60.3

Table 8 • ANALYSIS OF HOUSING NEED 2000 TO 2025

2322

AFFORDABILITY IN USD

GAMA OTHER URBAN ALL URBAN ALL RURAL

AT HC:Y RATIO OF 3

13,672.23 18,252.52 16,809.52 9,162.10

AT HC:Y RATIO OF 4

18,229.64 24,336.69 22,412.70 12,216.13

AT HC:Y RATIO OF 5

22,787.05 30,420.86 28,015.87 15,270.17

Source: compiled using data from UN-HABITAT (2011).

Table 12 • AFFORDABILITY DETERMINED USING MEAN HOUSEHOLD

INCOME IDENTIFIED IN GLSS 6, INDEXED TO 2016

Source: UN-HABITAT, 2011

Figure 3 • HOUSING AFFORDABILITY PYRAMID

Income

Range

Income

GHC/month

Percentage of all

Households

Maximum

affordability

(in GHC) assu-

mining 3 times

annual income

Housing cost

(GHC) aimed at

the thresholds

Monthly

maximum rent

levels (GHC)

affordable at

R:Y of 10%

Very High >4,000

180,000 476,000 &

204,000

500 +

High 3,001–4,000

10%

144,000 163,200 400

Mid-high 2,001–3,000

50%

of households

can afford housing

costing between

GHC12,001 and GHC72,000

108,000 95,200 300

Middle 1001–2,000 72,000 Up to 54,000 200

Moderate 501–1,000 36,000 100

Low income 101–500 18,000 50

51–100

35%

of households can

afford housing costing

GHC12,000 or less

12,000 10

No wage

income

0–50

Source: CAHF 2013.

Figure 4 • HOUSING AFFORDABILITY IN GHANA

The cheapest newly built house for sale is

$25 000. A buyer would have to put down

a $2500 deposit and earn $970/month to

afford a 20 year mortgage (US dollar deno-

minated) at 13,5%.

About 90% og Ghana's housing stock has

been produced through self-build. A sizeab-

le middel class suggests opportunities for

microﬁnance. These are being explored by

Habitat for Humanity International with its

MicroBuild Fund.

$1,25/day

Ghana is 52,52% urban

INTERNATIONAL POVERTY LINE

51,8%

live on less than

$60/month

$2/day

$4/day

Source: compiled using data from GSS (2008 and 2014)

Quintile/

locality

Mean annual

household

expenditure

(GHS)

Mean annual

per-capita

expenditure

(GHS)

Percentage

of expen-

diture on

housing (%)

Mean annual

household

cash ex-

penditure

on housing,

water, electri-

city and gas

(GHS)

Mean annual

per-capita

cash expen-

diture on

housing,

water, elec-

tricity and

gas (GHS)

Total an-

nual cash

expenditure

on housing,

water, elec-

tricity and

gas (million

GHS)

Mean

household

size

Year

2008 2014 2008 2014 2008 2014 2008 2014 2008 2014 2008 2014 2008 2014 2008 2014

Lowest

821 3,924 132 664 7.1 5.6 3.4 10.9 12 — — 57 — — 6.4 6.1

Second

1,242 5,833 247 1,194 10.8 10.0 2.6 10.9 23 — — 106 — — 5.1 5.0

Third

1,500 7,444 367 1,761 14.7 14.6 2.5 11.5 36 — — 178 — — 4.4 4.4

Fourth

1,942 9,238 548 2,656 21.0 21.9 2.5 12.0 60 — — 276 — — 3.7 3.6

Highest

2,864 14,665 1,261 6,337 46.3 47.9 2.2 13.3 136 — — 709 — — 2.5 2.6

Accra

3,009 13,677 — 5,039 — 25.8 4.5 16.7 — — — — — — 3.3 3.4

Other

urban

2,170 9,841 — 3,407 — 39.9 2.2 12.6 — — — — — — 3.6 3.7

Urban

2,449 11,061 — 3,926 — 65.8 3.2 14.2 325 1,288 115 463 575 4,638 3.5 3.6

Rural

1,514 7,152 — 2,112 — 34.2 1.5 9.0 128 589 38 184 239 1,359 4.4 4.5

Ghana

1,918 9,317 644 3,117 100.0 100.0 — 12.4 212 1,015 71 354 814 5,997 4.0 4.0

Table 10 • HOUSING EXPENDITURE BY QUINTILE GROUP AND TYPE OF LOCALITY

Source: compiled using data from GSS (2008 and 2014)

Quintile Average annual

household income

(GHS)

Average annual

household

expenditure on

rent (GHS)

Average an-

nual per-capi-

ta expenditure

on rent (GHS)

Total annual

cash expen-

diture on rent

(million GHS)

Average

annual house-

hold expen-

diture on

maintenance

(GHS)

Average annual

per-capita

expenditure on

maintenance

(GHS)

Total annual cash

expenditure on

maintenance

(million GHS)

Year

2008 2014 2008 2014 2008 2014 2008 2014 2008 2014 2008 2014 2008 2014

Lowest

728 6,571.8 — — — — — — — — — — — —

Second

1,020 10,698.0 — — — — — — — — — — — —

Third

1,098 14,823.5 — — — — — — — — — — — —

Fourth

1,263 16,909.7 — — — — — — — — — — — —

Highest

1,544 25,200.9 — — — — — — — — — — — —

Accra

— 17,023.7 — — — — — — — — — — — —

Other

Urban

— 22,726.8 — — — — — — — — — — — —

Urban

— 20,930.1 — — — — — — — — — — — —

Rural

— 11,408.0 — — — — — — — — — — — —

Ghana

— 16,644.6 18 423.94 8 192.26 90 749.21 86 568.18 25 178.99 151 1,054.77

Table 11 • ANNUAL INCOME AND EXPENDITURE ON RENT

2524

The next tier of cities that could beneﬁt from af-

fordable housing initiatives comprises Kumasi and

Sekondi-Takoradi. Kumasi, the capital of Ashanti

Region, is a very strong commercial centre in the

West African sub-region and is also a renowned

cultural centre. As such, it has a large population

(2.1 million in 2010), making it the second largest

city in the country. About 4% of households in

Ashanti Region live in houses unﬁt for human hab-

itation (GSS 2013). The region contains 16.9% of the

country’s housing stock but has the second highest

number of households per house (GSS 2013). De-

mand for housing in Kumasi is second only to that

of Accra. The coastal city of Sekondi-Takoradi has,

since the local discovery of oil in 2007, also been

growing increasingly rapidly, as substantial num-

bers of newcomers including lower-income house-

holds, move into the city region.

The third geographical area of interest is the Sa-

vannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA)

region, which comprises the Upper West, Upper

East and Northern regions and northern portions

of the Brong-Ahafo and Volta regions. The SADA

region consists of small towns and cities including,

among others, Tamale (the largest), Wa, Bolgatan-

ga and Kintampo. The region is inhabited by more

than 4.4 million people with large household sizes

and the lowest level of expenditure on housing.

The Northern Region, for example, has consistently

recorded the highest household membership in

each censual year, with 7.7 members per household

recorded in the 2010 census. In the last four censu-

ses conducted in Ghana, average urban house-

holds' sizes in the Brong-Ahafo, Upper West and

Upper East regions were shown to be higher than

the national average (GSS 2014). Meanwhile, 1.2

households occupy one dwelling in the Northern

Region while over 35% of households in the three

northern most regions have one or two sleeping

rooms. In terms of housing quality, over 30% of the

housing stock of the three northern regions is built

with mud/earth. This area has the highest pro-

portion of such housing nationally, which means

that the quality of housing in these regions, often

regarded as the poorest in the country, needs to

be improved. Households in the rural savannah,

for example, have Ghana’s lowest mean annual

income at GHS 10,094.73 (GSS 2014).

What the above tells us is that Ghana’s affordable

housing market requires tailor-made and carefully

designed interventions that target speciﬁc market

segments. The market exhibits mixed characteri-

stics that appeal to all income groups, especially

households in the low-income category. The avai-

lability of local building materials, land and labour

could be explored further to support customised

solutions that are low cost.

ue to market inelasticity, emerging an-

ecdotal evidence suggests that the formal

housing supply targeted at the high-income

bracket is practically at saturation point in Accra.

Indeed, it is not uncommon for luxury apartments

to remain vacant for up to two years in the ca-

pital. Furthermore, the rents for such properties

appear to be falling from the peak levels recorded

in 2007–2009. The case has never been clearer or

more urgent for the market to refocus, moving

away from current practices that price out middle-

and low-income earners and towards delivering

housing that meets the needs of lower-income

customers.

There are several ways to identify which elements

of affordable housing offer the most exciting pro-

spects for those interested in affordable housing

initiatives – be they opportunities for improving

quality, tenure, occupancy or location. As discus-

sed previously with regard to Table 4, it is not

possible to determine housing quality merely by

considering the materials used to build it. The

actual condition of the part of the building being

surveyed (e.g. external walling) must also be consi-

dered. For instance, the 2000 and 2010 PHC surveys

do not indicate the condition of the sandcrete wal-

ling, which makes it difﬁcult to determine the scale

of the business opportunity for those interested in

providing home improvement services. The obvious

exception to this is, of course, housing built using

materials that are patently of insufﬁcient quali-

ty, such as tents and improvised homes (kiosks,

containers, etc.). What is required, then, are further

studies to determine the condition of the materials

used for the elements of housing in question.

A substantial proportion of households living in

rent-free situations as well as those perching or

squatting are likely to reside in relatively poor con-

ditions. In GAMA 23% of the metropolitan region’s

housing stock is occupied in these ways, in other

cities and towns this ﬁgure rises to 29%, and in

rural areas it is 27% (GSS 2014). De-crowding the

smaller dwellings, particularly the one-room and

two-room types, by adding another room would,

for the most part, substantially reduce the level of

crowding occurring within them. As these types of

accommodation are often associated with low-in-

come households and are typically found in com-

pound housing, a building extension programme

for small dwellings would have a signiﬁcant impact

on affordable housing stock.

Housing demand and ability to pay differs from

one city region to the next. Of the several geogra-

phical areas identiﬁed as key locations for initi-

ating the proposed affordable housing business

models, GAMA is the most important. Here, resi-

dents have the highest per-capita income and they

spend proportionately higher amounts on housing

(16.7%). The metro region’s socio-economic, admi-

nistrative and political character acts as a magnet,

drawing large numbers of migrants into the city re-

gion each year. These migrants, who come seeking

better livelihoods, have diverse economic proﬁles

and come from within and outside of Ghana. The

Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA) is current-

ly home to 16% of Ghana’s population, making the

scale of the market for affordable housing in Accra

vastly bigger than in other locations. As the GAMA

has a varied population, its housing need has both

quality and quantity dimensions.

INTERESTING AREAS FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING

2726

commercial parking space

playground

everal governments, especially from the im-

mediate post-independence era, recognised

housing as both a basic right and a catalyst

for sustained economic development. Over time

different governments have adopted slightly diffe-

rent approaches to housing, depending on the le-

vel of priority attached to it and on the macro-eco-

nomic conditions of the period. As such, the sector

has witnessed interventions ranging from policy

and direct ﬁnancing, to housing provision and

home improvement schemes, among others. A

signiﬁcant proportion of these interventions were

concentrated on Ghana’s major cities. The 1986

National Shelter Strategy sought to refocus policy

towards minimal state intervention in the housing

market and on creating an enabling environment

(Bank of Ghana 2007). Since then, state interven-

tions have been diverse, covering areas including

research on and the promotion of local building

material use, land reform and the establishment of

land banks (either directly or through quasi-state

organisations).

STATE AND QUASI-STATE INTERVENTIONS

Over the years, a number of property market actors – be they state, quasi-

state, private sector, NGO, housing cooperative, and credit union – have designed

and implemented programmes aimed at delivering affordable housing. In many

instances, the cost of the end-product differs substantially from the anticipated

end-price. This section attempts to catalogue major housing interventions

in Ghana from the post-independence era to date as well as ‘successful’

interventions from non-state actors.

Affordable housing

interventions in Ghana

Photos: RegencyFoundation, Turelinckx, Puyvelde and Vandenbempt (2011)

he 103 founding members of Tema Housing

Cooperative (THC) were low-income people

living in the Tema area, earning month-

ly incomes of around USD 50–80. Established

in 1972, the THC’s central aim was to provide its

members with affordable housing (that could be

subsequently extended). The Tema Development

Cooperation (TDC) granted the THC land sufﬁcient

to build 105 housing units. In its ﬁrst phase the

THC housing units each cost GHS 2,812 (equal to

approximately USD 2,400) and comprised a single

bedroom, a lounge, kitchen, washing and toilet

facilities plus extra foundations installed for the

optional addition of up to three bedrooms at a

later date. The project was carried out in three

phases, with phases one and two supported with

a total of GHS 168,000 in loans from the govern-

ment’s Low-Cost Housing Scheme. By 1987 a total

of 52 units, comprising a mixture of one- and

two-bedroom houses, had been completed, all of

which offered varying options for extension. At this

time, members were also in the process of building

another 48 units.

By the end of phase two, the THC had repaid

the government loan and its associated interest

charges, and had trained a number of its mem-

bers to carry out the planning and design of phase

three, which was subsequently approved by the

TDC. However, inﬂationary pressure in this period

devalued the THC’s savings, which prevented the

Cooperative from moving forward with the next

phase of housing. It did, however, lay the founda-

tions for the remaining 53 units and the owners

used private means to complete them. Infrastruc-

ture including road surfacing (unsealed), drains,

water and electricity connections (both off- and

on-site) and the central sewer were progressively

and wholly ﬁnanced by THC members.

Owners of all the houses built in phases one and

two have since expanded their homes, adding

further rooms either for residential or commercial

purposes. This can be seen as a mark of the mo-

del’s success. Although the THC still exists and plans

to develop another phase, there is no space for any

further developments at its current site. In addition,

members also decreased their contributions to the

Cooperative once their houses were complete.

NON-STATE HOUSING INTERVENTIONS – HOUSING COOPERATIVES

Tema Housing Cooperative

2928

lue Rose Ltd was originally founded in 1987

as a ﬂoristry business but, in 2005, the

company decided to venture into property

development. It has since built over 900 housing

units consisting of two-bedroom terrace houses,

two- and three-bedroom semi-detached houses,

two- and three-bedroom detached houses, and

two-bedroom terraced houses, usually set within

gated communities. The housing provided targets

different segments of the market – from the working

middle classes to the top end of the upper classes.

The residents of Blue Rose estates are employed

across a wide spectrum of occupations including

teaching, nursing, law, the civil service, etc.

The cheapest unit, a one-bedroom expandable

unit, costs GHS 80,000. The most expensive unit, a

four-bedroom detached house, costs GHS 292,000

or its equivalent in another currency.

The ﬁnance to build the housing comes from com-

mercial loans from lenders including the HFC Bank.

Prospective buyers are required to make a 100%

cash payment or take on a mortgage with a com-

pulsory 20% down-payment. Mortgages are usually

arranged with the HFC Bank or Ghana Home Loans.

Additionally, a charge of GHS 3,000 is paid to cover

the documentation and utilities.

Another 1,000 two- to four-bedroom homes are

planned to be built at Kasoa near Budumburam

in 2016. In 2014, at the BID International Quality

Summit in New York, Blue Rose was awarded the ti-

tle of the ‘Most affordable real estate developer in

Africa committed to building houses to the highest

quality standards’.

n 2013 the Affordable Housing Project in Tama-

le, with funding from REAL UK (a peer-to-peer

lending platform for small and medium-sized

property developers), began developing a total of

200 two-bedroom detached houses at two loca-

tions within the Tamale Metropolitan Area.

One site belongs to the Tamale Cooperative Credit

Union (TCCU), which undertook to develop the pro-

perties for its members, while the other was made

available by the Tamale Metropolitan Assembly in

order to provide housing for interested staff wor-

king in its decentralised departments. The Assem-

bly is also installing the required infrastructure at

both sites. Potential buyers were required to pay

20% of the unit cost

upfront, with the remainder

to be paid over ﬁve years at an interest rate of

18% per annum. In 2015 the project stalled due

to funding issues and the irregular reporting of

progress on project implementation. This has since

been resolved and, at the time of writing, work was

scheduled to resume in June 2016. By the end of

April 2016, 100 units were about 65% complete at

the TCCU site, a total of 23 units were fully comple-

te at both sites, and the remaining properties were

at various stages of completion.

PRIVATE SECTOR INTERVENTIONS

Blue Rose Ltd Tamale Affordable Housing Project

PROJECT DATA

LOCATION

Lahagu

TARGET GROUP

Active poor

TOTAL NUMBER OF

UNITS

200 units (100 at each site)

SPECIAL FEATURE

Focus on homeownership

support services

Figure 5 • A TWOBEDROOM TERRACE HOUSE

Photos: Blue Rose 2016, Water and Sanitation for Africa (2016)

3130 31

he TAMSUF project, implemented with sup-

port from the UN-HABITAT Slum Upgrading

Facility (SUF), promoted the development

of affordable housing units for the Amui Djor slum

community. The primary objective was to develop,

test and apply new and innovative means for

ﬁnancing pro-poor urban development projects,

with an emphasis on domestic capital mobilisati-

on. UN-Habitat support involved the provision of

grants including an initial USD 400,000 for capital

enhancement and another USD 100,000 for admi-

nistration and development (Tweneboa 2011). The

project also beneﬁted from a total of GHS 79,714 in

subsidies accruing from government’s contribution

(37%), contributions received from Peoples Dialo-

gue Ghana (43%), and the value of the land (20%).

The project built a total of 31 apartments compri-

sing a mixture of single-room self-contained and

two-bedroom apartments. The project determined

the costing for building a single-room apartment

to total GHS 6,500 but, upon completion of the

units, this cost had almost doubled (UN-HABITAT,

2011).

To make the units affordable, they were cross-sub-

sidised through the installation of 15 shop units

as well as public toilets and bathing facilities to

be rented as business ventures. This reduced the

cost of a single self-contained room and two-be-

droom apartment to GHS 6,576.68 and GHS 13,157.36

respectively (Tweneboa 2011). Beneﬁciary house-

holds, made an upfront payment of GHS 1,000. To

enable them receive loans, they formed a coopera-

tive group and then received loans guaranteed by

UN-HABITAT of GHS 1,500 from People’s Dialogue

and approximately GHS 4,000 from AmalBank, each

to be repaid within 10 years. Beneﬁciaries pay a

total of GHS 75 a month to service their loans.

Project managers acknowledge key challenges

including; access to the land, ability of beneﬁcia-

ries to service loans, securing credit arrangements

for beneﬁciaries and some members withdrawi-

ng membership from the cooperative (Tweneboa

2011). Presently, members of the cooperative are

meeting their repayment obligations. Also, import-

antly, the cooperative has entered into negotia-

tions to purchase land adjoining its current site for

the next phase of its housing development.

PROJECT DATA

LOCATION

Amui Djor

TARGET GROUP

Slum dwellers

TOTAL NUMBER OF

UNITS

31 apartments

SPECIAL FEATURE

GHS 79,714 in subsidies

COST

Monthly rent of GHS 75 for a

one-bedroom unit and GHS

140 for a two-bedroom unit

MAIN CHALLENGE

Tenure security

Addressing the

challenges of

affordable housing

pproximately 85% of households (Figure

3) can afford housing but are currently not

considered by formal property developers.

The size of the market for affordable housing and

the dearth of affordable housing solutions on the

market presents a wide range of opportunities –

e.g. in ﬁnancing, direct provision, maintenance and

servicing, etc. To beneﬁt from these opportunities,

different schemes can be modelled to target spe-

ciﬁc pro-poor objectives and ﬁnancing schemes.

Market dynamics coupled with population growth

and urbanisation provide a signiﬁcant basis for

affordable housing provision in the country in the

medium to long term.

When it comes to investing in real estate, the sup-

ply gap is now in affordable housing. The density

of market demand is, however, unevenly distribu-

ted across the country. The major cities present a

cross-section of all affordable housing needs and

have the highest demand for affordable housing.

Similarly, a signiﬁcant proportion of the estima-

ted GHS 1.2 billion affordable housing market is

based in urban areas; in rural areas, the need

for affordable housing is more tied to improving

housing quality. Affordable housing solutions must

therefore be designed to target the speciﬁc needs

of households in all these different contexts.

hose providing affordable housing need to

consider the whole value chain of housing

provision, which involves four main stages

(Figure 6). The ﬁrst stage involves land acquisition,

planning, design and the acquisition of permits for

the proposed housing. The cost of land, administ-

rative processes to acquire titles and permits, and

on-site infrastructure constitute the ﬁrst hurdles to

delivering affordable housing. For instance, it takes

around three months to secure the land titles for a

plot of land rented under customary tenure, which

is not only slow, but also incurs high transaction

costs. Cutting the bureaucracy and transaction

costs involved would help to accelerate the pace of

housing delivery.

The second stage, production and construction,

involves three main overarching approaches: home

extensions, maintenance and retroﬁtting, and new

home construction.

SIZE OF THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING MARKET

THE HOUSING VALUE CHAIN

TAMSUF Affordable Housing Project in Ashaiman Municipality

Sourcing

& design

Production &

construction

Sales &

marketing

Maintenance,

deconstruction

& recycling

Photos: RegencyFoundation, Tweneboa (2011)

Figure 6 • THE HOUSING VALUE CHAIN

3332

ouseholds currently living in units abo-

ve the two-persons-per-room threshold

laid down in the new planning and zoning

standards are considered to be in need of additi-

onal and affordable housing. The understanding

underpinning this determinant is that households

living as such would rent the additional rooms re-

quired to ensure the comfort of household mem-

bers if they could afford to do so. In urban areas,

in particular, a common practice is for relatives to

put up with family members until the latter are in

a position to rent their own apartments (see Tables

5 and 6). In such cases, it is often children who are

most affected by the resulting overcrowding, as it

is they who usually have to share their rooms with

the new occupants. In worse cases, even the pa-

rents also end up having to share their rooms with

extended family members. The provision of addi-

tional rooms for such households would therefore

radically ease congestion.

Overcrowding appears to be more of an urban pro-

blem, with the largest proportion of overcrowded

dwellings occurring in the country’s major cities of

Accra, Kumasi and Secondi-Takoradi. Since these

cities are hotspots for commercial, administrative

and social capital, they attract different kinds of

migrants. Those who cannot afford decent housing

end up in slums and/or crowded housing condi-

tions. Disposable incomes are, however, higher in

urban areas, with more people in a better position

on the affordability scale.

As table 15 shows, ﬁnancing schemes for home

improvements and/or extension are an essential

component in the suite of solutions that are par-

ticularly targeted at low- to middle-income earn-

ers. The uptake of the HFC Boafo and Sinapi Aba

Trust home ﬁnancing schemes demonstrates that

landlords are willing to take on loans for home

improvements and that renters are willing to pay a

little more for additional or improved housing fa-

cilities. However, the interest rates on these loans

limit their accessibility and make the loans more

difﬁcult to repay.

ver 100,000 new dwelling units are re-

quired annually to house the additional

households in Ghana, and a total of 5.7

million additional rooms are needed by 2020.

Property investors may wish to build dwelling units

themselves or instead, ﬁnance the building or

purchase of properties.

The new housing could be greenﬁeld develop-

ments and come in the form of incremental

housing, expandable housing, non-expandab-

le units or complete units. Delivery options for

expandable housing units could include wet core

areas or shell and core structures. Based on the

housing needs assessment, investors may choose

to engage in the provision of expandable housing

units, particularly for people in slum areas and

for single households who may require additional

space. Horizontal incremental housing does, howe-

ver, conﬂict with Ghana’s spatial vision of densiﬁed

cities and the associated preference for vertical

home construction.

fourth business model involves the standar-

disation of construction processes and skills

and the development of alternative building

materials. The use of locally available building

materials, including pozzolana, bamboo, laterite,

timber and clay, among others, has the potential to

drive down housebuilding costs (Figure 7). Materi-

als and labour constitute over 70% of the cost of

housebuilding (UN-HABITAT 2011). The tendency in

Ghana is to use sandcrete blocks and cement; a

conventional technology that is not only expensi-

ve, but also requires longer building construction

durations especially for on-site developments. If

Ghana is to build the affordable housing it needs,

it must therefore ﬁnd alternative materials and

seek ways to reduce built delivery times and la-

bour costs.

The Kumasi-based Buildings and Roads Research

Institute has carried out several studies on the use

of local building materials. Although several alter-

natives have been identiﬁed and developed, their

deployment has yet to be to scaled up. And thus,

at present, 90% of the building materials used in

Ghana are imported (UN-HABITAT, 2011).

The mass utilisation of local building materials

could also engender new employment opportuni-

ties along the housing value chain (with the caveat

that the standardisation of these materials needs

to incorporate sustainability principles). The use

of certain locally manufactured building materials

such as hydrofoam involves simple step-by-step

processes that could easily be assimilated and

used by local artisans, unskilled builders and even

prospective homeowners themselves. Indeed, cer-

tain materials are so easy to use that it would be

possible for households to build their own homes.

Transferring the knowledge and skills associated

with these techniques generates opportunities

for micro-entrepreneurship. Skills training pro-

grammes would also ensure that the quality and

standards required for large construction projects

can readily be sourced locally.

second line of intervention involves sche-

mes that help households to repair their

respective homes and improve the quality

of services available to the home. A signiﬁcant

proportion of homes are in an extremely poor

condition, requiring major improvement and

maintenance works. Such improvements could also

include de-crowding measures to ensure that pro-

perties meet the two-persons-per-room standard,

especially in the country’s northern regions and its

slum areas.

Clearly, this approach represents a

huge opportunity for the market, with microﬁnance

organisations particularly well placed to promote

their lending options for home upgrading.

The TAMSUF project’s experience described above

suggests that providing rooms in storeyed buil-

dings instead of in separate units is viable and is

an affordable option for poor households. Ho-

wever, the success of such projects is contingent

on huge subsidies and/or cross-subsidies. The

SUF’s Kojokrom Market project in Sekondi-Takoradi

potentially offers a more sustainable approach

to delivering affordable housing for low-income

households. The project involved the constructi-

on and sale of market stalls to 60 women market

vendors and is expected to at least double the

incomes of these beneﬁciaries. As a result, it is

not unlikely that these women will now consider

upgrading their homes with their extra earnings.

This assumption reﬂects the approach taken by

most Ghanaians who tend to access loans for pro-

ﬁt-making ventures and then use the returns on

these ventures to build or improve their homes.

Home extension, improvement and completion schemes

Maintenance and Retroﬁtting

Construction of new units

Standardisation of Labour and Local Building Materials

Material and labour

71%

Financing

15%

Land 9%

Infrastructure 5%

Figure 7 • COST COMPONENTS OF A TYPICAL

HOUSE BUILT BY FORMAL PRIVATE SECTOR

Source: UN-Habitat (2011)

3534

igure 7 on the cost of housing suggests alter-

native yet complementary ways of dealing with

housing affordability. At ﬁrst glance, labour

and materials together constitute the largest cost.

However, a signiﬁcant proportion (90%) of the buil-

ding materials used in Ghana are imported and are

thus affected by the weakening currency and inﬂa-

tionary pressures, which substantially increase the

costs of housebuilding. For housing to be affordable

to prospective low-income households, import sub-

stitution – where imported building materials are

substituted with locally available and/or produced

ones – is essential. In the absence of an explicit

policy imperative, a public discussion is needed on

building materials, the results of which can be used

to guide policy directions, including ﬁscal measures

to direct and stimulate import substitution.

Similar to building materials and labour, construc-

tion methods also have a role to play in reducing

build costs. In Ghana, building technologies have

remained practically unchanged for several deca-

des now and this stasis is preventing the house-

building sector from proﬁting from economies of

scale. By standardising their construction methods

and design elements, such as heights and ﬁxtu-

res, housebuilders could minimise costs and also

increase productivity as workers gain experience

from repeating work processes. Further savings are

possible through the mass production of building

components off-site (pre-fabrication). Today’s frag-

mented building materials supply chain also needs

to be made more efﬁcient so it can complement

improvements in materials.

STRATEGIES FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING DELIVERY

INTERNATIONAL FIRMS

LOCAL MICRO, SMALL

AND MEDIUM-SIZED

COMPANIES

PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS

FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

(BANKS, MFIS, ETC.)

Leading bids for new housing

development projects (e.g.

workforce accommodation

schemes for security services)

Providing local building mate-

rial inputs

Promoting land banks and

mixed building schemes for

both low-income and luxury

apartments that allow for

cross-subsidy

Providing ﬁnancing schemes

and mortgages for housing

construction

Providing advanced techni-

cal know-how, machinery or

building materials to local

partners

Sub-contracting works or

building-related services out

from larger ﬁrms

Setting up joint ventures

with international and local

companies to build low- and

middle-income housing de-

velopments

Offering MFIs schemes for

home maintenance, upgra-

ding and extension, and the

purchase of home accessories

including renewable energy

technologies

Transferring successful bu-

siness models for low- and

middle-income housing to the

local market

Participating in building

maintenance

Research and training pro-

grammes on the use of local

building materials and tech-

nologies

—

Building large-scale mar-

ket-speciﬁc affordable

housing developments

Providing insights on local

market conditions to interna-

tional ﬁrms

— —

Working with building material

wholesalers to market inno-

vative construction materials

and inputs

Directly supplying building

material inputs, photovoltaics,

etc. to households via local

distribution agents

— —

—

Providing building materials

and services to local develo-

pers

— —

—

Working with building material

wholesalers to market inno-

vative construction materials

and inputs

— —

—

Providing retroﬁtting services

for existing buildings

— —

Table 13 • MATRIX OF BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES

Labour and materials

ccess to land in good locations is essential

for reducing the cost of housing. Since it is

usually the largest single item of real-esta-

te expenditure, the cost of securing serviced land

will directly affect the cost of the housing built on

it. Land values in the major cities are extremely

high, driving all new housing developments to

these cities’ peripheries where land is relatively

cheaper. Yet, within the cities a number of suitable

sites are presently underutilised or in some cases

vacant. Underutilised and vacant lands belonging

to the state could be leased to private develo-

pers with contractual conditions that require a

percentage of the development to be given over to

affordable housing.

Land administration and registration often involves

long and difﬁcult bureaucratic processes and often

results in high transaction costs. Consequently,

most houses are constructed without building per-

mits or on lands without titles. This, in turn, limits

the ability of those owning homes on such sites to

access the housing ﬁnance that would normally be

available to them.

he average interest on mortgages available

to prospective homeowners ranges from

30% to 42% per annum. This is unaffordable

for the majority of the population and especially

for low-income households. This situation is not

exclusive to the housing sector per se, but reﬂects

the general cost of borrowing in Ghana. Efforts to

tackle this issue therefore largely involve public

policy. Improvements in underwriting would help

banks to safely make more housing loans available

to lower-income borrowers. Additionally, the state

could help to minimise developers’ ﬁnancing costs

by making affordable housing projects less risky

– e.g. by guaranteeing a certain percentage of the

housing cost to protect developers against losses

incurred by buyers or tenants defaulting on their

payments for ﬁnished units.

n Ghana, a critical question for developers

is exactly who will bear the cost of both on

and off-site infrastructure (i.e. roads, waste

management, water and electricity). The current

ambiguity to this regard compels private develo-

pers to pay the installation costs and then pass

them on to homebuyers. As such, the prices of

properties developed by the formal private sector

in areas with no existing trunk infrastructure are

pushed even higher. A cost sharing and/or cost re-

covery arrangement between the public sector and

private developers would incentivise private sector

participation to install these kinds of facilities.

Senegal has rolled out a number of initiatives

to make housing affordable as part of its One

Family, One Roof programme. These involve

providing potential homebuilders with incen-

tives – namely, free land and tax holidays for

imported construction equipment – as well as

a 3.3% subsidy for target homebuyers purcha-

sing the properties. However, to enjoy these

beneﬁts, individual units must not cost more

than USD 15,500 (CAHF 2012).

MAKING HOUSING AFFORDABLE

Box 4 • MAKING HOUSING AFFORDABLE

Land supply and location

Financing

Urban infrastructure and municipal services

3736

This section of the report presents sampled views of experts and slum dwellers

on affordable housing.

Customer and

value proposition

Views on affordable housing: Ellen Oteng Nsiah,

Executive Director, Housing the Masses

In my view, the term affordable housing in Ghana

has been misused. Housing affordability is com-

monly measured as housing costs that equate to

up to 30% of one’s income. However, what may be

affordable for a middle-income earner, may not

be for a low-income earner. It is therefore prefer-

able to use the term low-income housing, in order

to speciﬁcally describe the target group under

discussion. As such, the term affordable housing

should be used for general purposes to describe

decent and adequate housing that consumes one

third or less of your income, no matter what inco-

me group you fall in. The term should not, however,

be used to describe the housing of a particular

socio-economic group: affordable housing does

not equate to low-income housing.

Affordable housing solutions

With the active support and participation of gover-

nment, relevant stakeholders must make a cons-

cious effort to initiate, coordinate and collaborate

on both the demand and supply sides of housing

provision, especially that for low-income groups.

Secondly, comprehensive and diverse solutions

need to be developed, including incremental provi-

sions, that are tailored to the housing needs of the

various income and socio-cultural groups. Sustain-

able ﬁnancing must also be put in place for both

the demand and supply sides of housing.

To enable sustainable housing provision for all

income groups, but particularly for low-income

groups, the country’s land regulators and authori-

ties need to develop a short, transparent, cheaper

and better-supervised land acquisition process.

Financing and subsidies should be made availab-

le to both the demand and supply sides, and the

capacities of stakeholders need to be developed in

a sustainable way that, enables those in the formal

and informal sectors to work together effectively.

Sector professionals also need to be made aware

of how to make housebuilding proﬁtable, which

will encourage them to build more.

Where necessary, this would involve training and

informing stakeholders on how to deliver and

acquire affordable housing and especially low-in-

come housing. The government should also take a

lead role in promoting stakeholder collaboration

and instilling the conﬁdence required to make

housing truly affordable to all and especially to

people on low-incomes.

Challenges to private sector provision of affordable

housing

One of the several factors that have made the

private sector reluctant to invest in affordable

housing is the lack of adequate ﬁnancing for af-

fordable housing, especially low-income housing,

on both the demand and supply sides. Another is

that not all stakeholders are prepared to work in

the low-income housing sector, as they consider

the low-income market, rooted generally in the

informal economy, to be a high-risk area. There is

also a lack of adequate experience among formal

and professional actors in Ghana’s wider housing

sector of working effectively, sustainably and

successfully with low-income earners. Low-income

earners and informal sector workers also often

have no experience of formal sector business

transactions and processes, which can deter them

from engaging with the formal housing sector for

their housing needs, even when they have the

resources to do so. As a result, the market remains

too small to attract the attention of private sector

investors.

Key barriers to affordable housing projects

Key barriers include cumbersome land acquisi-

tion processes that make land and thus housing

more expensive, insufﬁcient ﬁnancing for both the

demand and supply sides of housing that is also

difﬁcult to access, and the inappropriate options,

designs and materials offered for low-income

housing.

Views on affordable housing: Tony Asare, Principal

Architect at Tekton Consult

Asare asserts that the deﬁnition of affordable

housing is not static and should be better descri-

bed as low-income housing rather than affordable

housing. The inference is that it is easier to de-

termine what constitutes low income and thus a

low-income household, and hence to target inter-

ventions at this market segment. When it comes to

the concept of affordability, he states that what is

affordable to him will not be affordable to many

other people. Asare explains that he has designed

buildings worth USD 1.6 million for clients who

view them as affordable. Meanwhile, less expensive

schemes costing in the region of USD 100,000 are

deemed unaffordable by other clients.

Asare believes that we are behaving like ostriches.

When one considers the current daily minimum

wage in Ghana and compares that against the cost

of housing, it means some people will never be able

to afford their own housing in their life time. Gover-

nment must therefore step in to build homes for

low-income people, especially those in urban areas.

Challenges to affordable housing and alternative

propositions

Land:

Without considerable ﬁnancial enginee-

ring, the cost of urban land in Ghana will

prohibit the construction of affordable housing,

and securing vacant plots in the cities is also

difﬁcult. Furthermore, obtaining the appropri-

ate land titles and documentation can also be

a challenge. As Asare states ‘every poor man

wants to build a mansion so they build little by

little’. To do this, they build far away from the

city where infrastructure is lacking but land is

cheap.

Building materials:

A key concern regarding the

use of improved local building materials is their

acceptability to potential homebuyers. The type

and use of alternative materials is inﬂuenced by

people’s preferences, culture and perceptions

of quality. For instance, in urban areas people

generally prefer sandcrete blocks. Glass has

also become a mark of modernity in the cities.

If alternative building materials are to be taken

up on a large scale, public acceptability issu-

es – a key constraint on the scaling up of local

building material deployment – must be com-

prehensively managed.

There are other factors that limit the use of

say compressed earth blocks. Given the lack

of open land in the cities, there are questions

about where the earth will be extracted from.

If it is brought in from rural areas, the cost of

transporting raw materials may outweigh the

cost savings normally achieved by the techno-

logy.

Another way of reducing the cost of building

materials is through targeted ﬁscal policy mea-

sures that would cut taxes on materials being

imported speciﬁcally to build cheap affordable

housing.

Design:

The way housing is designed can make it

affordable. Building layouts and conﬁgurations,

and designing and arranging regular geometric

and functional spaces all contribute to making

housing affordable. A building’s economics

must therefore be factored into its design.

Photo: Prime-Stat SVC Ltd.

3938

Infrastructure:

Many sites and newly emerging

settlements lack infrastructure and municipal

services. When a settlement lacks adequate

infrastructure, it easily becomes depressed. In

settlements or estates built by the private sector,

the cost of providing the required infrastructure,

including roads and electricity, is transferred to

the end-customer, which drastically increases

house prices and rents. Further discussion is

therefore required on who should pay to install

infrastructure in unserved and underserved

areas. Under the current system, any privately

purchased electricity poles and wiring that are

installed to connect a house or settlement to the

main electrical supply, automatically revert to

public ownership within 24 hours of installation.

Any national discussion to this regard should

focus on expanding access to public infrastruc-

ture and on how this will be ﬁnanced. A policy

change that requires government to provide

on-site infrastructure will mean that housing

developments can be built on serviced plots. An

arrangement for pre-ﬁnancing public infrastruc-

ture installation costs might also be put in place

to stimulate private sector interest in providing

serviced plots for sale.

Financing:

Interest rates on mortgages are very

high, commonly ranging from 32% to 45% per

annum. By contrast, in Senegal, where the inﬂa-

tion rate stands at less than 7%, average mort-

gage interest rates vary from 8% to 12% per an-

num. The macro-economic climate means that

investors can invest in housing with relatively

more certainty. Asare states, for example, that

he has had clients seeking to buy properties

in Ghana but, when it comes to taking out the

required mortgage, they decided not to proceed

due to the exorbitant cost of borrowing.

Reluctance of the private sector to provide

affordable housing?

The primary motivation for private sector actors to

invest in housing is to make a proﬁt. They there-

fore naturally seek to invest in the high end of the

market where there is less risk and higher returns

on investment. The private for proﬁt actor will not

sell a house with a market value of USD 100,000

for USD 60,000 just because of a desire to make it

affordable. One way to encourage affordable de-

velopment is to build planning conditions and ob-

ligations into contractual agreements that require

developers to develop a speciﬁed proportion of the

proposed overall scheme as affordable housing.

Background

Haruna is 35 years old and lives in Old Fadama,

one of the major slum settlements in the Greater

Accra Metropolitan Region. He is the head of his

household, comprising seven people, and owns the

four-bedroom house in which they currently reside.

Before moving to Old Fadama, Haruna lived at Lung-

bunga in the Tolon District of the Northern Region

with his grandfather, parents and siblings – a house-

hold comprising 20 people.

Physical infrastructure

At his current residence, Haruna has easy access to

water, electricity and sanitation services including a

private household toilet facility and bathroom.

Income and expenditure

Haruna is employed as an administrator in the informal

sector. With a monthly household income of GHS 1,000,

his monthly household expenditure averages 40% (GHS

400), which is spent on, among others things; food,

water, electricity, transport and health care.

Housing and land

Haruna owns his four-bedroom house, which

comprises two structures: one built with sandcre-

te and the other with wood. However, the land on

which these structures are built belongs to the Accra

Metropolitan Assembly, which means that his house

in Old Fadama is in effect a temporary structure.

The main factors that inﬂuenced the location of this

house were its proximity to Haruna’s workplace, how

protected the area is from ﬂooding and, above all,

the low cost of the housing unit.

Perceptions of affordable housing

Haruna pointed out that too many housing schemes

have been built for the formal and higher-earning

income groups and that informal and lower-income

earning groups have been neglected. He empha-

sised that, although several affordable housing

interventions are ongoing in Ghana, the costs and

administrative/legal issues involved make it impos-

sible for informal sector practitioners like himself to

participate. For Haruna, affordable housing should

have basic ﬁnishing and a moderate price that

is affordable for the poor in society and that can

feasibly be paid off within ﬁve years. He added that,

over the years, government has developed a number

of affordable housing schemes but, by the time they

are completed, the cost of their housing units is no

longer affordable, especially to the lower-income

group to which he belongs. His opinion is that, unless

mechanisms are put in place to enable the poor to

overcome the cost and administrative/legal hurdles

to accessing affordable housing units, the poor will

continue to be marginalised in this area. ‘The gover-

nment pretends to be providing affordable housing

units; we will also pretend to be receiving them while

we sleep on the streets’, he concluded.

NO NAME AGE OCCUPATION

MONTHLY

INCOME (GHS)

Majeed Yakubu 36 Computer engineer 500

Sulemana William 45 Unemployed —

Abigail Frimpong 23 Student —

Zakaria Adam 20 Student —

Sadeek Yakubu 15 Student —

Alhassan Abukari 12 Unemployed —

Haruna Abu

(head of household)

35 Administrator 1000

Household members

HARUNA ABU

Photo: Prime-Stat SVC Ltd.

4140

Background

Marvin is 24 years old, lives in Kokomlemle, around

the Kwame Nkrumah Circle, and works for a security

ﬁrm as a daytime security guard. He lives indepen-

dently in a single room. Prior to moving to Accra,

Marvin lived at Breman in Ashanti Region where he

lived with his family in a household of six people.

Physical infrastructure

At his current residence, Marvin has easy access to

water, electricity and sanitation services such as a

toilet facility and a bathroom, all contained within his

house’s compound.

Income and expenditure

Marvin is employed by a formal sector private securi-

ty company as a daytime security guard and earns an

average monthly income of GHS 150. He spends on

average GHS 120 per month on food, clothing, water

and transportation.

Housing and land

Marvin lives in a one-bedroom apartment built of

sandcrete that is owned by his employer. There are

six other rooms, one of which is occupied by another

tenant and the rest unoccupied. His accommodation,

which is provided by his employer, is included as part

of his employment contract, so he does not pay rent.

A block of ofﬁces belonging to his employer is loca-

ted on the same site as his dwelling. Key factors that

inﬂuenced his choice of accommodation were the

cost of the housing unit, its proximity to his place of

work and the easy access it affords to basic facilities

and services such as electricity, water and sanitation

services.

Perceptions of affordable housing

Marvin indicated that housing in Ghana is very

expensive and tailor-made for the higher-income

group. He added that government interventions to

address the great disparity in access have, so far, not

delivered the desired results and that, ‘All the so-cal-

led affordable houses are not in any case affordable’.

He expressed the need for government to build mass

housing schemes that offer units to low-income

groups at a cost they can afford. In conclusion, he

indicated that ‘while the cost of housing in Ghana

keeps rising, the government will never manage to

get everybody off the streets’.

Background

Rashida is 34 years old and was born and still resides

in Ashaiman, a well-known shanty town in Ghana

made up of lower-income households. She belongs

to a male-headed household comprising 10 people

who live together in a wooden structure owned by

her father.

Physical infrastructure

Rashida’s home is supplied with electricity, which

costs her household GHS 40 per month. The main

source of water for Rashida’s household is a commu-

nity pipe where one bucket of water costs GHS 0.50.

On average, her household spends GHS 90 a month

on water, which they use for bathing, cooking and

washing. Rashida’s home has a bathroom but no toilet

facility. Her household therefore uses a public facility

that is distant from the house and costs GHS 0.50 per

visit. On average, her household spends about GHS

150 on accessing the toilet facility monthly.

Income and expenditure

The average monthly income for Rashida’s house-

hold is GHS 2,800. On average, GHS 900 of this is

spent each month on food, clothing, water, transport,

and in accessing sanitation services.

Housing and land

Rashida’s dwelling has ﬁve rooms and the land it sits

on belongs to the Tema Traditional Council. As such,

she considers her dwelling to be a temporary struc-

ture and fears that her household could be evicted at

any time by the Council. The key factors inﬂuencing

her choice of a housing unit are, most importantly,

how much it costs and then how close it is to her

place of work, how well protected it is from ﬂooding,

and how easy it is to access basic facilities such as

electricity, water and sanitation.

Perceptions of affordable housing

Rashida indicated that housing in Ghana is not easily

accessible and, even when it is, it is very expensive.

She added that affordable housing in Ghana is not

‘affordable’ for poor and low-income earners. She

expressed the need for government to subsidise up

to 20% of the cost of housing units and to provide

occupants with a rent-to-own ﬁnancing model that

enables them to pay for their affordable housing

units. In conclusion, she indicated that, when the

term ‘affordable’ is applied to housing, the poor

should be able to afford it. The system should be so

inclusive that even a sachet water seller would be

able secure a place to live and pay for over time.

NO NAME AGE OCCUPATION

MONTHLY

INCOME (GHS)

Mohammed Mahamud (head of household) 71 Trader 1,000.00

Rukayatu Mahamud 55 Trader 200.00

Ibrahim Mahamud 38 Carpenter 500.00

Yussif Mahamud 36 Port assistant 300.00

Rashida Mahamud 34 Seamstress 500.00

Fatau Mahamud 27 Student (tertiary) -

Selasi Mahamud 23 Ofﬁce assistant 300.00

Ayuba Mahamud 20 Unemployed -

Barikisu Mahamud 19 Student (Senior High School) -

Fauzan Mahamud 13 Student (Junior High School) -

Household members

MARVIN SALIFU RASHIDA MAHAMUD

4140

Photos: Prime-Stat SVC Ltd.

4342

There is a two-way relationship between the structure of the housing market and

land administration on the one hand and the ﬁnancing mechanisms available to

developers and prospective homeowners on the other. A well-structured land and

housing market enables the provision of formal ﬁnancing mechanisms for housing;

but when the market functions poorly, informal mechanisms prevail. Sources of

funding in the Ghanaian property sector and particularly in the informal sector are

derived largely from personal savings and income. Formal ﬁnancing schemes largely

price out low-income earners.

large proportion of housing in Ghana is sup-

plied informally by households for themsel-

ves and their families, for extended family

members and also for rent. In rural areas 62.1% of

households own their places of abode, compared

with 32.8% in urban Ghana (GSS 2014), with dwel-

lings construction largely ﬁnanced using personal

savings (UN-HABITAT, 2011). About a third of house-

holds have savings accounts or contribute to a

savings scheme, with 46.4% of urban households

compared to 21.5% of rural households operating a

savings account. PricewaterhouseCoopers (Gha-

na) Ltd. reported that, in 2011, 80% of Ghanaians

were non-banked, which underlines the challenge

housing ﬁnance agencies face in rolling out ﬁnan-

cing programmes in the country.

Given the national average household income of

GHS 16,644.60 per annum (GSS 2014), households

need to save consistently for quite a number

of years to be in the position to build their own

housing, meaning people do not become ho-

meowners until well into their middle age. In 1993,

UN-HABITAT (2011) identiﬁed the mean age group

for becoming a homeowner in Accra, Kumasi and

Berekum to be the 45- to 49-year-olds group.

Incremental housing is a piecemeal building

approach, which makes it possible for low-income

earners to build their homes either horizontally or

vertically one stage at a time. To understand the

timescales involved, a civil servant on an average

wage who adopts this approach will usually have

fully completed their building towards the end of

his or her career.

SELF-FINANCING

Financing mechanisms

available for affordable housing

n general, few Ghanaians take out loans for

housing and in rural households in particular

uptake is markedly low (Table 15). Instead peop-

le prefer to engage in business, either as a start-

up or by expanding/improving existing activities.

Proceeds from these ventures are then invested

in housing development. Arguably, improving the

quality of one’s housing does not provide direct

short-term returns on investment, whereas in-

vesting loans in commercial activities certainly

does offer opportunities for a quick return on

investment as well as a steady stream of inco-

me. Informal sector workers therefore seek loans

for business rather than for housing (Shumann

and Miamidian 2009). For slum dwellers, there is

less motivation to carry out home improvements

because of the insecurity of their tenure.

LOANS FROM INFORMAL BORROWING, NON-FINANCIAL

INSTITUTIONS AND BANKS

2008 2014

SOURCE PERCENTAGE SOURCE PERCENTAGE

Relative/friend/neighbour 53.35 Relative/friend/neighbour 22.0

Trader 15.3 Savings and loans scheme 19.6

State bank 8.3 Private bank 18.6

Private bank 6.45 Public bank 12.2

Cooperative 4 Susu scheme 7.9

Source: compiled using data from the GLSS 5 and GLSS 6 reports.

Table 14 • TOP FIVE SOURCES OF HOUSEHOLD LOANS IN 2008 AND 2014

2008 2014

GAMA ALL URBAN ALL RURAL GAMA ALL URBAN ALL RURAL

LAND

— — — 26.3 81.9 18.1

AGRICULTURAL

INPUTS

1.2 2.5 12.3 0 19.3 80.7

BUSINESS

35.7 35.1 27.1 9.2 62.0 38.0

HOUSING

10.8 17.7 3.9 7.7 72.6 27.4

EDUCATION

AND TRAINING

16.7 13.5 6.5 6.3 51.8 48.2

VEHICULAR

1.9 1.5 0.8 24.3 64.5 35.5

Source: GSS (2008 and 2014).

Table 15 • PURPOSES FOR WHICH LOANS WERE TAKEN OUT

4544

As Table 14 shows, micro-loans provided by non-

bank ﬁnancial institutions (NBFIs) are an essential

component of the loan mix reported in 2014. The

efforts of such institutions (namely credit unions

and savings and loan companies) to establish

ﬁnancing portfolios are usually targeted at low-in-

come households. Loan products usually support

land purchase or home completion, improvements

or extension. HFC Boafo Susu Savings, an infor-

mal-sector-focused subsidiary of HFC Bank, was

established expressly in order to provide housing

loans to informal workers. It is currently attemp-

ting to diversify its loan portfolio by extending its

services to landlords, increasing its marketing tar-

geted at informal urban dwellers and widening its

geographical area of operations (UN-HABITAT 2011).

In a similar vein, Sinapi Aba Savings and Loans Ltd

received USD 1 million of USAID funding, disbursed

via Opportunity International USA, as part of the

Agency’s 2010 housing microﬁnance pilot initia-

tive involving Sinapi Aba and International Land

Systems. Under the two-year scheme, Sinapi Aba

provided housing microloans while International

Land Systems provided site plans to beneﬁciaries

in the Ashanti and Brong-Ahafo regions. Following

the success of the pilot, Sinapi Aba has sought

alternative sources of funding to continue the

programme.

In 2012 a second initiative got underway aimed at

promoting the growth of housing microﬁnance and

incremental housebuilding. Funded by MasterCard

and Habitat for Humanity International Ghana,

this USD 2.2 million ﬁve-year pilot project enga-

ged three microﬁnance companies – Sinapi Aba

Savings and Loans Ltd, uniCredit Ghana Ltd and

Opportunity International Savings and Loans Ltd

– in providing technical support for the develop-

ment of housing microloan products (CAFH 2015).

However, after the pilot project closed, only Sinapi

Aba Savings and Loans was able to sustain its ac-

tivities, with the other two MFIs withdrawing, citing

a lack of funds to progress the initiative. As such,

some 20,000 housing microloans for low-income

earners in mainly rural areas failed to be issued as

planned (CAHF, 2015).

Kumasi-based Global Access Savings and Loans

Ltd offers housing microﬁnance loans to low-in-

come earners in both urban and rural areas of

the Ashanti Region, while Opportunity Internatio-

nal Savings and Loans Ltd offers loans for home

improvement and incremental building. These two

institutions are among the top ten microﬁnance

institutions in the country.

Interest rates on housing loans in 2015 range from

36% to 42% per annum at HFC Boafo Susu Savings

and Loans, Global Access and Sinapi Aba, with loan

ceilings set at USD 26,155, USD 13,077 and USD 5,230

respectively (Bezant and Laufer, 2016).

Other NBFIs are doing things differently. Several

credit unions are venturing into housing ﬁnancing,

providing loans to members for the acquisition of

land, which is usually located in peri-urban areas.

The credit unions adopting this approach are

mainly those operated by churches or professional

unions. Besides issuing loans for home completion

or improvement, loans may also be granted in the

form of land. For example, the University for De-

velopment Studies and Tamale Cooperative Credit

Union have acquired large tracts of land in Tama-

le, plots of which could be allocated directly to

members. However, at present, it is not possible to

determine the sum total of loans issued by credit

unions speciﬁcally for housing. However, the Ghana

Cooperative Credit Unions Association currently re-

ports a membership of over 429 registered unions.

f the 31 banks operating in Ghana, nine

have ofﬁcial status as providers of mortga-

ge facilities to customers – namely Access

Bank Ghana, Bank of Baroda, Ecobank Ghana, HFC

Bank Ghana, Fidelity Bank, CAL Bank, Stanbic Bank

Ghana, First National Bank Ghana and United

Bank for Africa Ghana. Each of these banks offers

products across four main categories. The most

popular product is the home purchase mortgage,

which is used for buying new houses and requires

the borrower to make a 20% down payment, with

the bank providing a loan to cover the remaining

80%. The repayment period is usually 20 years. The

next two products, home improvement and home

completion mortgages, have a shorter repayment

period of ﬁve years and are used to either renova-

te an existing property or complete a house under

construction. The fourth product, the home equity

mortgage, is, as the name suggests, used to release

equity locked up in a property.

HFC Bank, Ghana’s largest mortgage provider, has

always asserted that it provides housing ﬁnance

for workers. However, the cost of its mortgages

price out most of its intended customer base,

making their mortgages the reserve of ‘low-risk’

borrowers. As a result of this exclusion, mortgages

have become unpopular among homebuyers. The

total value of mortgages in the country as at 2010

averaged 0. 25% of GDP, whereas South Africa with

a more developed housing ﬁnance market stood at

22.5% of GDP in 2014 (CAHF 2015).

Ghana Home Loans (GHL), which is transitioning

from the non-banking sector to the banking sec-

tor,

is the leading residential mortgage lender,

with nearly half of the market share nationally.

In 2014 GHL granted loans worth a total of USD

91,080,000 to 1,526 customers. This increased to

USD 97,100,000 issued to a total of 1,651 beneﬁcia-

ries in 2015 (GHL 2016, unpublished data).

Since

it began its operations, GHL has provided home

ﬁnancing worth a total of USD 160,000,000. The

company provides additional packages to custo-

mers including 100% mortgages and land purchase

and homebuilding mortgages.

MORTGAGES FROM BANKS AND NON-BANK INSTITUTIONS

INSTITUTION GROSS LOAN PORTFOLIO (GHS)

SINAPI ABA SAVINGS AND LOANS LTD

57,838,603

ASA SAVINGS AND LOANS LTD

36,218,600

OPPORTUNITY INTERNATIONAL SAVINGS AND LOANS LTD

56,590,868

FIRST ALLIED SAVINGS AND LOANS LTD

27,673,205

Source: compiled from http://www.mftransparency.org/

Table 16 • LOAN PORTFOLIO OF THE TOP FOUR NBFIS IN 2013

NO BANK

ANNUAL INTEREST

RATE

Bank of Baroda 24.5-28.8%

CAL Bank 35.3%

EcoBank 19.0-29.3%

GN Bank

HFC Bank 29.7 – 30.3%

Stanbic Bank 23.0-32.0%

Zenith Bank 29%

Source: Bank of Ghana 2016.

Table 18 • INTEREST ON MORTGAGES FROM

SELECTED BANKS SEPTEMBER, 2016

PORTFOLIO IN

USD MILLIONS

MARKET

SHARE (%)

GHANA HOME

LOANS

84 47

HFC BANK

47 27

FIDELITY BANK

24 14

CAL BANK

6 3

GHANA COM-

MERCIAL BANK

4 2

BARCLAYS BANK

12 7

TOTAL

177 100

Source: GHL 2013.

Table 17 • THE GHANAIAN MORTGAGE MARKET IN 2013

4746

n recent years’ remittances from abroad, in

particular from Europe and North America, have

begun to play a role in housing ﬁnance. Sent

to family members for diverse purposes, remittan-

ces are now Ghana’s third largest single source of

foreign exchange earnings after gold and cocoa. In

2011 total remittances

into the country amounted

to USD 2.2 billion, a ﬁgure that dropped slightly to

USD 1.97 billion in 2013. Although the proportion

of these remittances that is spent on housing is

unknown, remittances are an increasingly import-

ant factor in homeownership in Ghana (UN-HAB-

ITAT, 2011). Yeboah (2003), for instance, asserts that

Ghanaians living abroad now own half of the new

housing stock in Accra. However, given that the

proportion of remittances actually being spent on

housing has yet to be accurately quantiﬁed, it is

difﬁcult to determine the real extent of self-ﬁnan-

ced housing in Ghana.

entral government makes budgetary alloca-

tions to the Ministry of Water Resources, Works

and Housing (MWRWH) according to the pro-

posed programmes in its medium-term expenditure

framework. The MWRWH also uses this framework

to determine how it allocates its annual budgetary

resources to speciﬁc areas. Often the World Bank and

UN-HABITAT contribute resources to augment these

budgets; however, their funding is project speciﬁc.

Since 2010 the MWRWH has adopted a land-bank

approach to affordable housing where it acquires

and banks (i.e. sets aside for later development)

large tracts of land. Private developers are permit-

ted to build on these lands free of charge on con-

dition that they provide a contractually speciﬁed

volume of affordable housing on the site.

REMITTANCES

PUBLIC BUDGETARY ALLOCATIONS, SUBSIDIES AND

COLLABORATIVE EFFORTS

To identify the various key stakeholders involved in affordable housing in

Ghana, the authors of this report have examined the housing sector in general

and the affordable housing in particular, focusing speciﬁcally on those involved

in, among other things, affordable housing policy, regulation, ﬁnancing,

construction, and end-use.

egarding the functional relations existing

among stakeholders, Ghana’s 2015 National

Housing Policy (p. 28) acknowledges that,

‘institutional arrangements within the housing

sector remain fragmented, inconsistent with

existing regulations and inadequately funded.’ As

Figure 8 shows, multiple actors are involved in

the affordable housing sector – in construction,

ﬁnancing, regulation, infrastructure installation

and service provision – and have varying roles and

functions.

Key stakeholders

in the affordable

housing market

Environmental

protection agency

Traditional

council

Research

institutions

Land

Commission

Judiciary

Ministries,

departments

and agencies

Local authority

(metropolitan/municipal/district

assemblies) town and country

planning departments

Ministry of

Finance

Ministry of Water

Resources, Works

and Housing

Public housing

agencies (SHC,

TDC, etc.)

Private

developers

(GREDA)

(Work-based/

locality-based)

cooperatives

Cement monopoly,

importers, local

building materials

manufacturers

Individual

developers

Private

consultants

Banks

Individual

housing

Private

estate

Post-land sharing

individual housing

Private

contractors

Civil servants

(mostly at the

director level)

Resident

international

community

Ghanaians

living

abroad

Pooled

savings

/MFIs

Cooperative

members

Single households/

extended families

Mass/institutional

housing projects

Figure 8 • IDENTIFIED HOUSING SECTOR STAKEHOLDERS IN GHANA

Photo: Prime-Stat SVC Ltd.

4948

This report has explored the dynamics of Ghana’s housing market and, in so

doing, has sought to provide information and pointers for private sector actors

that will enable them to better make the business case for developing affordable

housing schemes in the country.

eveloping affordable housing solutions in

Ghana is vital if the country is to success-

fully address not just its present acute

housing shortage, but also its future needs. At pre-

sent, formal private developers tend to focus their

schemes towards those in the top income bracket.

As such, they are failing to address large segments

of the market, leaving low-income people to get by

in low-quality and often overcrowded housing and

others to survive in Ghana’s numerous slums or

living on the streets. In quantitative terms, in 2010

over 27% of Ghana’s households were in need of

affordable housing.

Major factors that make it difﬁcult for house-

holds to access quality and adequate housing are,

among others, land tenure issues, the high cost

of housebuilding, high interest on mortgages, and

low household incomes. These challenges vary

from one location to another: in the southern part

of the country, housing challenges are general-

ly linked to inadequate supply; in the northern

part, housing quality is the key issue. What is

true throughout Ghana, however, is that whatever

the housing solution devised, it must be ﬂexible

enough to embrace the largely informal charac-

ter of income-generation and homebuilding in

Ghanaian society.

Conclusion

LEVEL ELEMENT STATE PRIVATE

COOPERATIVE/

COMMUNAL/INFORMAL

LAND MANAGEMENT

Lands Commission

judiciary system

Land Administration Project

(LAP) Internal Revenue Service

(IRS)

individual freehold (limited)

Land Secretariat of Chiefs,

Family and Clan Heads and

Elders

traditional councils

PLANNING

Town and Country Planning

Department

Tema Development Corporati-

on (TDC)

State Housing Company (SHC)

Land Use Planning and Ma-

nagement Project (LUPMP)

private developers

consultants

partnerships of chiefs/family

heads and surveyors/planners

Tema Housing Cooperative Society, (Amui Djor Cooperative, etc.)

Employee groups: IRS, Ghana Standards Board Staff Association,

Volta Aluminium Company Staff Housing Cooperative, Circle Neo-

plan Drivers’ Association

Professional groups: Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT),

Ghana Medical Association, Ghana Registered Nurses

Faith-based groups: Church of Pentecost (McKeown Investment Co.

Ltd), Assemblies of God

SERVICING

Department of Urban Roads

Ghana Water Company Ltd

Electricity Company, Ghana

TDC

Ministry for Local Government

and Rural Development’s Ur-

ban Infrastructure Projects

Metropolitan, Municipal and

District Assemblies’ (MMDA)

annual infrastructure extensi-

on plans

PS Global

Elite Kingdom

International Land Develop-

ment Company

FINANCE

Ministry of Finance and Econo-

mic Planning

the World Bank

UN-HABITAT

French Development Agency

(AFD)

etc. (for loans and grants)

Ghana Home Loans

Fidelity Bank

Ecobank

Other commercial banks

(for construction loans and

mortgages)

Savings groups

DEVELOPMENT

CONTROL

MMDAs’ works departments

police

National Disaster Management

Organisation

judiciary

- Land guards

HOUSEBUILDING

AND MAINTENANCE

SHC

TDC

Public Works Department

Social Security and National

Insurance Trust (SSNIT)

Architecture and Engineering

Services Ltd

GREDA

international developers

contractors

consultants

Individuals

prospective tenants

Water and Sanitation for Africa

HOUSING TENURE

Rent control department

courts

Foreclosure

Rent-free status (extended

family support)

FINANCE (LOCAL)

Bank of Ghana

SSNIT

Public Servants’ Housing Loans

Scheme Board

Ghana Home Loans

Fidelity Bank

microﬁnance banks

Ghana Microﬁnance Institu-

tions Network

Tier 3 Pension Scheme funds

life insurance funds

HFC Bank (reducing mortgage

operations)

Susu scheme

credit unions

Teachers Fund

Nurses Housing Fund

Ghana Federation of the Urban

Poor’s Housing and Land

Savings Scheme

the pooled funds of formal/

informal vocation-based and

other cooperatives

BUILDING

MATERIALS

Ghana Standards Board

the Mining sub-sector of the

Ministry of Lands and Natural

Resources

local steel tycoons (Kwasi

Oppong, etc.)

importers of tiles, glass and

plumbing ﬁttings

Chinese warehousing/retailing

paints, pipes and plastics (part

import/ part local manufac-

turing)

aluminium sector (local manu-

facturers)

Cement:

Ghacem Ltd

Dangote Cement (re-bagging)

Imports from China, Turkey, etc.

Building and Road Research

Institute’s Pozzolana cement

sandcrete and landcrete block

production

brick and roof tile production

(small to medium-scale in-

dustry in Brong-Ahafo Region,

Winneba city, etc.)

sand and stone contractors

mining (informal)

Table 19 • INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENT OF THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING SECTOR

5150

ANNEX 1: AVAILABLE LITERATURE ON HOUSING IN GHANA

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Thwala, D. W., Sackey, S., Awere, E. and Bamfo-Agyei, E. (eds),

African Journal of Applied Research, Vol. 1, No 1, Cape Coast,

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sits-

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5352

ANNEX 2: RELEVANT HOUSING INFORMATION ON GHANA

A conventional method for estimating housing

need is to assume a certain threshold per

house as the basis for ascertaining the scale of

the need. In Ghana’s 1987 National Housing Po-

licy, the objective was to reduce the threshold

of ten persons per unit to seven per unit. Using

a similar system to calculate housing demand,

the Bank of Ghana categorises houses with

8.7 or more persons to be overcrowded and

promotes an ideal limit of one household per

house.

The basis of this approach is to set a desirable

ceiling for the number of occupants per room.

For low-income housing, the 2015 National

Housing Policy suggests two persons per

room, a ceiling that also forms the basis for

the housing need assessment contained in the

policy document. UN-HABITAT’s 2014 Ghana

Housing Sector Proﬁle also uses this threshold

approach for its housing need assessments.

To determine affordable housing demand in

this report, this approach was adopted, becau-

se, in both urban and rural Ghana, houses are

generally occupied by several households.

The ﬁrst approach, which assesses occupancy

without taking into account family structure,

fails to address the culturally embedded

practice of nuclear and extended family

members cohabiting.

HOUSING NEED BASED ON DWELLING UNIT PER HOUSEHOLD

HOUSING NEED BASED ON ROOM OCCUPANCY THRESHOLDS

Box 5 • METHODOLOGIES FOR ESTIMATING HOUSING STOCK

NO YEAR GOVERNMENT INITIATIVES AND MAJOR ACTIVITIES

1957-66 Convention People’s Party

Tema Development Corporation (TDC) and the State Housing Corporation

(SHC) established

Rent control legislation put in place

Roof Loan Scheme and Wall Protection Scheme both launched

1966–69 National Liberation Council

Two-year development plan delivered through the TDC and SHC, with

1,000 units built

1969–72 Progress Party

2,000 housing units delivered by the SHC and TDC against a target of

8,000 units (the implementation plan did not indicate the typology of the

housing units in question and their associated costs)

Tema Housing Cooperative (THC) initiative established

1972–79

National Redemption Coun-

cil; Supreme Military Councils

I and II

National Low-Cost Housing Committee established

Low-Cost Housing Scheme operational (from 1972 to 1974)

1979 Armed forces

Rent control laws reinforced

State Houses Allocation Implementation Committee established

1979¬–81 People’s National Party

1,990 rental units delivered by the SHC and TDC

Table 20 • SUMMARY OF MAJOR GOVERNMENT HOUSING

INITIATIVES SINCE GHANA’S INDEPENDENCE

YEAR

1960 1970 1984 2000 2010

TOTAL NATIONAL

POPULATION

6,726,815 8,559,313 12,205,574 18,912,079 24,658,823

PERCENTAGE

INCREASE

- 27.2 43.7 53.8 30.4

GROWTH RATE

2.4 2.6 2.7 2.5 2.5

NUMBER OF

HOUSES

636,198 945,639 1,204,395 2,181,975 3,392,745

PERCENTAGE

INCREASE

- 48.6 27.4 81.2 55.5

NUMBER OF

HOUSEHOLDS

- 1,793,580 2,480,368 3,701,241 5,467,136

PERCENTAGE

INCREASE

- - 38.3 49.2 47.7

HOUSEHOLDS

PER HOUSE

- - - - 1.6

PERSONS PER

HOUSEHOLD

(URBAN/RURAL)

- 4,7 4,9 5,1 4,4

- - 4,1 5,0 4,3 5,2 4,7 5,4 4,1 5,0

PERSONS PER

HOUSE

10.6 9.1 10.0 8.7 -

Source: compiled using data from the Ghana Statistical Service (2005 and 2012).

Table 21 • CHANGES IN GHANA’S DEMOGRAPHICS AND HOUSING STOCK 19602010

NO YEAR GOVERNMENT INITIATIVES AND MAJOR ACTIVITIES

1981–93

Provisional National Defence

Council

World Bank Accra District Rehabilitation Project operational (1986–92)

SSNIT Mass Housing Estates (1987–2000) built

Draft of the National Housing Policy and Action Plan 1987–1990 (Novem-

ber 1986) prepared

Draft of the National Shelter Strategy (1987–92) prepared

GREDA and HFC formed in 1988 and 1990 respectively

1993–2000

National Democratic Con-

gress

Draft National Shelter Strategy (1999–2000) reviewed

World Bank Urban 2 to Urban Environmental Sanitation Project (UESP) 1

projects delivered with slum upgrading component

HFC bank Ghana Ltd established

SSNIT Workers’ Housing Schemes built in regional capitals and se-

condary cities

2001–2009 New Patriotic Party

Overseas Private Investment Corporation/USAID support the setup of

Ghana Home Loans (2006)

UN-HABITAT Slum Upgrading Facility put in place (2005 to present)

Review of the National Shelter Strategy initiated (2005 and completed in

2015)

International Finance Corporation’s Ghana Primary Mortgage Market

Initiative established (2007)

Affordable Housing Programme initiated in 2005 with an initial target

of 4,500 units and an ultimate target of 20,000 units – the Programme

failed to complete any units, so the project was subsequently handed

over to the TDC and SSNIT for completion

2012 to

present

National Democratic

Congress

Construtora OAS Ghana Ltd awarded contract to build 5,000 units in

Prampram – the ﬁrst phase of 1,502 units is near completion

Phase 1 of the Slum Upgrading Project completed

5554

KEY AREA

MAJOR CHALLENGES

LAND

High land acquisition and transaction costs, representing 15% of the total

development cost

Insufﬁcient availability of developable lands

Multiple land ownership claims and litigations (thousands of land litigation cases

presently being processed by the courts)

SUPPORTING INFRASTRUCTURE

Absence of on-site infrastructure at many sites (both new and under development),

the installation of which comprises between 10% and 30% of the overall cost of the

development

BUILDING MATERIALS

Ghana is highly dependent on imports, with around 80% of materials currently

being imported

Inadequate R&D and local technology

Barriers to local alternative materials and absence of standards for local alternatives

FINANCE

High cost of borrowing (30% to 37% APR)

INSTITUTIONS AND GOVERNANCE

Fragmented policy and regulatory environment

Inadequate capacity – quality of craftsmanship, artisanal training

Data-poor environment

Table 22 • SUMMARY OF PRINCIPAL BARRIERS TO/ENABLERS

FOR AFFORDABLE AND INCLUSIVE HOUSING PROJECTS

FOOTNOTES

1 Unregulated market-based production of goods and services,

whether legal or illegal (Smith 1994).

2 The rational was not to sample respondents in a strictly

scientiﬁc way, but to form an impression of the affordable

housing market from a cross-section of stakeholders. The

terms of reference therefore set out an approach for obtaining

a sense of the local context of affordable housing and not for

producing a theoretically grounded body of research. Further-

more, the research was aligned to a similar approach used for

an earlier workshop delivered in Nigeria by the same team.

 The measure of USD 2 per day was established by the World

Bank as the median poverty line for middle-income countries,

a category that Ghana now falls into (source:

http://www.

worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2008/09/16/new-data-

show-14-billion-live-less-us125-day-progress-against-poverty-

remains-strong, accessed on 20 July 2016).

 There is no consensus as to what constitutes low income. The

Ghana Housing Policy adopts a daily household income of USD

.

 At present, it appears to be common practice among low-in-

come households to build as and when the household can

mobilise enough finance to complete a phase of home const-

ruction.

 Areas with more than 5,000 inhabitants.

 See the Ghana entry on PopulationData.net at

http://www.populationdata.net/?option=pays&pid=72&-

nom=ghana (accessed on 15th June, 2016).

 On the graph the population growth rate appears not to show

any growth or decline. This is due to the scale used and the

very slight changes recorded.

 The surveys for the GLSS 5 and GLSS 6 reports where conduc-

ted between September 2005 to September 2006 and October

2012 to October 2013 respectively.

 The sharp contrast in the dominant building materials used

in rural and urban areas is highlighted in yellow.

 The average household size reported in 2010 was 4.4 persons

per household. Thus, households occupying one or two rooms

is indicative of crowding levels and a deviation from the requi-

red 2 persons per room.

 Perching generally refers to an arrangement where a per-

son/household moves in to join another household in their

living quarters, usually for a short term duration (on temporary

basis) while the former makes arrangements to relocate

(source:

http://microdata.worldbank.org/index.php/catalog/

/datafile/F/V, accessed on  September ).

 Annually in urban areas, –.

 Depending on what metric is being measured: number of

dwellings, number of houses or number of rooms.

 In the GLSS 6 report, housing expenditure is composite of

expenditure on housing and housing services; water, electricity

and gas. The same meaning is maintained in this section.

 Some cells are black because the data is not captured in the

GSS reports

 Some cells are black because the data is not captured in the

GSS reports

 Using an exchange rate of GHS . to USD .

 GHC refers to the Ghanaian Cedi (GHS) and R:Y refers to Rent

to Income ratio

 Used as a proxy because the population and housing censu-

ses do not capture housing quality.

 As at May, 2016 there were discussions to review the prices

per unit upwards as delays in project completion resulted in

cost increases.

 Financed by Shack Dwellers International. People’s Dialogue

also provided transitional accommodation for would be resi-

dents while the housing units were built.

 Housing brokerage is still embryonic and usually follow

informal word-of-mouth. Housing deconstruction is often as-

sociated with unauthorised buildings/structures and recycling

uncommon. As such the market potential of these stages can

be assumed to be limited and thus not detailed in this report

 Overcrowding and the use of unconventional building mate-

rials are common features of Ghana’s slums.

 Although it is acknowledged that households often prefer to

access loans for business investments rather than home impro-

vements, with the proﬁts generated from the investment being

subsequently invested in housing (UN-Habitat 2011).

 In 2008 the survey combined agricultural land with equip-

ment while it is not immediately clear the purpose of land

 In May 2016, the bank reportedly offered 15.1% interest on

mortgages. The currently reported rate is unclear.

 The country’s central bank, the Bank of Ghana, has just

issued an interim authorisation to Ghana Home Loans Ltd en-

abling it to operate as a universal bank (source:

http://www.

ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/business/Ghana-Home-Lo-

ans-gets-banking-license-453399, accessed on 7 July 2016).

 These ﬁgures are based on the outstanding balances of

loans rather than approved amounts.

 This data was sourced from

http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/

static/f/74284/25426256/1410346424887/C.E.O+Artice.pdf?to-

ken=K77WZKeTR6jn76RaKNXuO7VDuE4%3D (accessed on 14th

May, 2016).

 This refers to remittances sent via the banking system. The

Bank of Ghana estimates that a certain amount is being sent

through other ‘illegal systems’.

 NB: this list combines the bibliographical references for the

works cited herein with a catalogue of available literature on

housing in Ghana.

 The programme has not being closed but no further invest-

ments have been made since the TAMSUF project.

 Programme funds were not disbursed as planned due to

the global economic crisis. Subsequently in 2009, Ghana Home

Loans was given 10 million USD to boost residential mortga-

ge lending and provide better access to housing ﬁnance for

Ghanaian

 The $ is the infographic denotes US dollars (USD)

Source: meQasa Ltd 2016.

RENTAL VALUES OF PROPERTIES DEVELOPED BY FORMAL

PRIVATE DEVELOPERS IN ACCRA IN JANUARY 2016

Prime

Neighbourhood

Average

Neighbourhood

$4.114.56

Cantoments

furnished

$4.035.59

Airport Res.

unfurnished

$3.171.53

Labone

unfurnished

$1.306.73

East Legon

furnished

$885.83

Dzorwulu

unfurnished

$1.442.64

Abelemkpe

furnished

$904.81

Spintex

furnished

$167.3

Achimota

unfurnished

$102.76

Dansoman

unfurnished

$395.59

Ashale Botwe

unfurnished

3-4 bedrooms

1-2 bedrooms

$500

$1k

$2k

$3k

$4k

$5k

PUBLISHED BY:

Inclusive Business Action Network

Deutsche Gesellschaft für

Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH

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[email protected]

www.ib-an.net

Authors

Sarfoh, Kwadwo Ohene

Kavaarpuo, Godwin

Ayitio, Joseph

Reviewers and contributors

Alfred Berkoh

Ellen Oteng-Nsiah

Tony Asare

Farouk Braimah

Maja Rotter

Design/layout and typesetting

dithodesign.de

URL links:

Responsibility for the content of external websites

linked in this publication always lies with their respective

publishers. GIZ expressly dissociates itself from such content.

GIZ is responsible for the content of this publication.

Publication Date

November, 2016

On behalf of

Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)