Housing Policy and Social Inclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa Under Neoliberalism: A Systematic Review and Policy Implications
Introduction
Housing policy and social inclusion in sub-Saharan Africa under neoliberalism present a complex landscape where market-driven reforms often clash with the urgent need for affordable shelter. Despite global calls for inclusive cities, the supply of a socially inclusive housing market system remains challenging, particularly in the post-1990s era.
This systematic review examines the driving forces facing inclusive housing policymaking and seeks to identify innovative housing policy and market options in sub-Saharan Africa under neoliberalism. By analyzing extant literature published between 1990 and 2022, this article provides a comprehensive overview of the structural barriers and emerging strategies that define the current housing crisis in the region.The Neoliberal Context and Housing Exclusions
The surge of neoliberalism during the post-1990s is believed to exacerbate the increased inability to afford housing and intensify emergent patterns of social exclusions. These exclusions are often reflected along ethnic and racial lines, favoring the exchange-value of urban spaces over their use-value.
Neoliberalism facilitated informality and enabled actors such as speculators, real-estate developers, and the private sector to cultivate economic gains, though often at the expense of the low-income majority.
Under this framework, the conventional role of the state was reduced in favor of international institutions and market forces. This shift necessitated the mushrooming of real-estate markets, which culminated in evictions of the poor from their settlements. Consequently, housing policy and social inclusion became increasingly difficult to achieve as governments withdrew from direct provision, leaving a vacuum that was often filled by profit-driven entities rather than welfare-oriented initiatives.
Understanding Social Exclusion
Social exclusion in the housing sector is not merely an economic issue but a multidimensional problem. It involves the exclusion of groups of city residents from access to all that the city has to offer based on race, class, religion, income, gender, or national origin. In sub-Saharan Africa, exclusions partly result from the mounting fragmentation of urban areas, worsened by insufficient urban planning, lack of coordinated housing policy, and lack of slum prevention strategies.
Theoretical perspectives on social exclusion vary. Neoliberalists argue that social exclusion is an inevitable but unintentional adverse impact of the global economic system. In contrast, radical positions claim that social exclusions are equated with relative deprivation, resulting in poverty and inequality.
A transformational perspective justifies the role of social relations rooted in formal and informal institutions. Understanding these levels—structural, relational, and personal—is crucial for developing effective housing policy and social inclusion strategies.
Major Challenges Facing Affordable and Inclusive Housing
A systematic review of 72 articles covering 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa reveals several critical challenges impeding the provision of affordable houses. These challenges are deeply embedded in the socio-economic, political, and historical contexts of the region.
Misunderstanding the Housing Question
One of the striking factors impeding the provision of affordable houses is the yawning gap between the housing needs of the low-income and the government’s understanding of the housing problem. Governments in sub-Saharan Africa often perceive the housing problem as a mere ‘numerical shortfall’ and seek political solutions to address this quantitative backlog. This misunderstanding of the major housing question, ‘housing for whom’, leads to wrong assumptions in housing policymaking.
Failure to understand the real housing question based on demand-side assessment and considering heterogeneous groups, specifically the majority of low-income households, leads policy towards ineffective outcomes.
Many countries embarked on state-led mass housing policies, albeit with failure in addressing the housing needs of the target groups. This lack of concrete and adequate data on housing attributes, combined with a lack of political will for making genuine assumptions, further complicates housing policy and social inclusion efforts.
Centralized Planning and Narrow Market Options
Governments in developing countries often resume centralized, top-down planning approaches inherited from colonial regimes. This technocratic-oriented approach assumes that housing problems can be resolved using rigid planning ordinances guided by professionals and technical experts, ignoring the role of low-income households in housing themselves. Such top-down planning characteristics are evident in countries like Mauritius, Namibia, South Africa, and Kenya.
Furthermore, narrow land and housing policy and market options for the low-income persist. State-dominated housing supply and narrow market options exclude the lower middle-income and low-income groups. Political interests of public authorities in urban planning, often driven by a desire to build a modern city image, override pressing local housing needs. This results in limited housing market options for low-income groups, ineffective enabling approaches, and weak public-private partnerships.
Limitations of Enabling Approaches and Neoliberal Impacts
The World Bank’s ‘enabling approach’ to shelter provision, adopted in the mid-1990s, demands a supportive role from the state. However, evidence reveals the failure of many countries to implement attributes of enabling approaches effectively. Limitations include the vested interests of the private sector in public-private partnerships (PPP), ambiguous housing policies, lack of specific strategies, and weak decentralization.
Neoliberalism’s adverse impacts are significant. It favors the market value of urban land over its use-value, necessitating a capitalist mode of housing production. This reduces households' ability to afford housing, as land constitutes a major share of expenses. Rapid marketization of affordable housing options has limited enabling approaches, and space-based exclusions are common consequences. The paradox between profit-driven interests of the private sector and welfare-oriented interests of governments remains an impeding factor for housing production and supply.
Weak Public-Private Partnerships and Finance Gaps
Public-private partnerships (PPP) were intended to enhance government efficiency in producing affordable houses. However, PPPs have adversely impacted housing supply options for the low-income due to the vested interests of the private sector. National governments often fail to offset the adverse impacts of the profit-oriented private sector on the use-value of urban land using legal and institutional frameworks.
Additionally, a lack of innovative and sustainable housing finance systems is a pressing challenge. Growth in urban population and inherent limitations of the public sector for adequately financing housing development, especially for the urban poor, are widespread. Fragmented approaches to financing housing, such as sites-and-services and slum upgrading, have also failed to meet goals like cost recovery and replication, despite providing some affordable housing.
Emerging Policy Options for Inclusive Housing
Despite these challenges, the review identifies diverse strategies for fostering inclusive housing. These strategies require socio-economic and political commitment, stringent guidelines, and robust institutional frameworks.
Understanding the Real Housing Problem
Fostering the provision of affordable houses demands understanding the everyday livelihood realities of heterogeneous households. Policymaking must consider local housing needs in terms of age, gender, socio-cultural, and economic activities. It is vital to integrate quantitative and qualitative aspects of housing needs and understand self-help housing options ethnographically. Developing land and housing information systems using land inventory, database development, and cadastral mapping is essential for periodic assessment of housing needs.
Promoting Differentiated Housing Policies
Optimal understanding of the actual housing problem helps make genuine assumptions in housing policymaking. Differentiated housing tenure options, including owner occupation, rental housing, collective self-help, and inclusionary housing programs, should be promoted. Increasing a range of land tenure options is also suggested as a policy option for rapidly urbanizing cities. This approach moves away from monolithic strategies and acknowledges the diverse needs of urban residents.
Encouraging Enabling Approaches and Space Co-production
There is an urgent call for enforcing attributes of enabling approaches using stringent policy strategies. This includes improving the capacity of actors involved in housing delivery, accepting lower standards, and upgrading low-income housing. Space co-production and collaborative planning are crucial. Human settlement development demands the involvement of various stakeholders, particularly the target low-income households themselves. Examples include community-driven development through empowerment and formalization of informal settlements through active participation of end users.
Strategic Spatial Planning and Inclusionary Housing
Strategic spatial planning links inclusive housing development with affordable infrastructure, such as Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), and employment opportunities. This policy strategy demands political support and adequate financial resources. Inclusionary housing, or inclusionary zoning, is an emerging policy strategy meant to capture resources created through the marketplace to create affordable housing. Although its implementation in sub-Saharan Africa is in its infancy, it shows potential in countries like Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa. Inclusionary housing requires stringent housing policy detailing its implementation and a carefully designed PPP.
Innovative Land Management and Finance
Innovative land management strategies, such as land value capture (LVC) and community land trusts (CLT), are important for promoting affordable and socially inclusive housing. LVC seeks to use increments in land value resulting from public policy for public interest, while CLT splits property into land and improvements, allowing households to own dwellings while holding land jointly through a trust.
Additionally, fostering innovative housing finance, such as micro-mortgage-based core housing schemes and fixed interest rates, is paramount. Synergistic PPP with a people-centered approach can help balance public and private interests.
Housing Policy and Social Inclusion: Bridging the Gap
The nexus between housing policy-making and social inclusion within the neoliberal market economy is complex. While global and regional concerns for inclusive cities have grown, national-level housing policies in sub-Saharan Africa often diverge from these goals.
The revival of mass housing schemes, induced by housing market failure, has often missed the targeted low-income households due to challenges surrounding accessibility, affordability, and procedural transparency.
Expanding the role of the private sector through the enabling approach has overshadowed the state's role in regulating the housing market for inclusivity. The penetration of new global actors into housing markets, albeit at the expense of the low-income majority, highlights the need for careful regulation. Viable housing programmes targeting low-income city residents have been initiated, such as inclusionary housing in Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa, but achievements remain negligible without strong state-private sector collaboration.
Adapting socially inclusive approaches to housing largely depends on embedded socio-economic, political, and historical contexts. Political commitment is crucial to favor inclusive strategies over laissez-faire approaches.
An ethnographic understanding of urban residents, supported by housing market assessments, inclusive land/housing policy frameworks, and adequate financial resources, is essential. Promoting inclusive housing requires an integrative approach encompassing social, economic, and environmental dimensions.
Conclusion
This systematic review highlights that housing policy and social inclusion in sub-Saharan Africa face significant hurdles under neoliberalism. The major challenges stem from a misunderstanding of the housing question, centralized planning, narrow market options, limitations of enabling approaches, adverse impacts of neoliberalism, lack of innovative finance, and weak PPPs.
However, viable policy options exist, including understanding real housing problems, promoting differentiated policies, encouraging enabling approaches and space co-production, strategic spatial planning, inclusionary housing, innovative land management, and innovative finance systems.
The result of this study does not propose a universal housing solution for all countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Instead, it presents diverse strategies for fostering inclusive housing, provided they are backed by appropriate socio-economic and political commitments as well as stringent guidelines and institutional frameworks.
As the region continues to urbanize rapidly, the importance of integrating housing policy and social inclusion into broader urban planning agendas cannot be overstated. Future research and policy implementation must prioritize the needs of the low-income majority, ensuring that housing serves as a tool for social inclusion rather than exclusion.
The ongoing value of this document lies in its comprehensive analysis of the driving forces and its presentation of context-specific, innovative solutions for achieving socially inclusive housing markets in sub-Saharan Africa.