Navigating housing affordability in Rwanda: Challenges and facilitation strategies

Abstract

Housing and its affordability have, of recent, been of great concern to various stakeholders, especially in the developing world. Consequently, contributing aspects such as construction/tenancy costs, sustainability, environmental impact, and availability of credit facilities with a host of other factors, have dominated contemporary research. Various studies suggest that addressing affordable housing requires understanding the contextual factors that impact affordability of housing. Such studies have not been known to succinctly treat the context of Rwanda. This paper aimed at exploring the perspectives of housing affordability in Rwanda with a view of eliciting the status, challenges, and prospects. The objectives included description of the current status of housing, identifying the challenges of providing affordable housing, and proposals of strategies to enhance its provision. Data, such as for workers’ salary, costs of house construction, inflationary trends and the number of housing units per income group, were sought for and obtained either from the archives of various stakeholder organizations or by interviewing key officers concerned with housing. Descriptive statistics and thematic analyses were employed in analyzing the data in order to fulfil the objectives of the study. It was found that home ownership and tenure statistics varied, yet housing demand was on the rise. Foremost challenges, among others, were recorded to be scarcity and costly plots of land, compounded with costly building materials. In addition, the purchasing power of the local currency depreciated fast over time, thereby making good quality housing unaffordable for the majority of Rwandans. Localizing policy to enhance public awareness, resolving the issue of high cost of construction materials, and coming up with innovative interventions on land costs, were among the key strategies to facilitate housing affordability.