ShafDB and CPF team up to co-finance affordable housing
Pan-African housing financier Shelter Afrique Development Bank (ShafDB) has teamed up with CPF Group to scale the development of large-scale affordable housing projects in Kenya.
The two organizations seek to provide a platform for intervention across the affordable housing value chain in the country by creating a partnership in affordable housing delivery through co-financing.
The deal also seeks to establish a Housing Solutions Fund for Kenya, which will make interventions on the supply and demand side of the affordable housing value chain.
Both ShafDB and CPF Group will jointly design and manage the Fund – including offering capital raising and technical support to the management of the Fund. ShafDB is a Pan-African institution that seeks to finance and advance housing, urban, and related infrastructure development across the continent.
The agreement, which is expected to boost ShafDB’s mandate of providing decent and affordable housing in Africa, was signed in Nairobi by CPF Group Managing Director, Dr. Hosea Kili, and Shelter Afrique Development Bank Head of Credit and Operations, Mr. Christopher Chege, on behalf of the Managing Director Mr. Thierno-Habib Hann.
“As a company, our overriding strategy is the provision of affordable housing across our member States through public-private partnerships. This strategic partnership with CPF Group will be key in expanding our projects in Kenya,” Mr. Chege said.
“We are excited to partner with Shelter Afrique Development and leverage on each institution’s strength as we jointly address the perennial problem of decent and affordable housing in Kenya. This partnership opens up opportunities for collaboration in many areas including product & services design and finding innovative funding solutions for our current and future projects,” Dr. Kili said.
At the moment, Kenya has a total housing deficit of two million housing units, a challenge that could worsen due to high rates of population growth and high urbanization rate at 4.4 percent well above the global average of 2.1 percent.
Out of Kenya’s total population of 50.6 million, 29 percent reside in urban areas. To resolve the housing conundrum, the Kenyan government has put in place a global framework through the Bottom-up Economic Transformation Agenda (BETA) to deliver 250,000 housing units per year against the current 50,000 annual deliveries.
“It is against this background that Shelter Afrique Development Bank and the CPF Group are joining forces through the Collaboration Agreement to scale up affordable housing delivery. We believe our partnership with CPF Group will deepen our impact on Kenya’s and by extension, Africa’s affordable housing value chain, from both the supply and demand side,” Mr. Chege explained.
