Suite or Slum? Ghana's Serious Shortage of Affordable Housing

Due to a lack of mid-price housing, urban Ghanaians are often confined to two options: plush penthouse or crammed shanty town.

When filmmaker Leslie Amponsah was shown round a squalid and waterlogged property up for rent in a suburb of Accra, Ghana, he was quoted a monthly rate that was barely affordable, even on a decent income, and was told that the landlord wanted two years up front. The estate agent would also be charging a 10% commission, he was reminded, and was already being paid a fee for every viewing.

As frustrating as this experience was, it is nothing out of the ordinary in Accra. Amponsah endured fruitless searches for months before finding a new home, and tales of middle-class Ghanaians looking aimlessly for suitable properties in Accra are common. "Even when you have the money to rent, it's terrible,” says Amponsah, "that is how ridiculous it is.”

Accra is in the grip of a serious housing crisis. Ghana’s economy has been one of the fastest-growing in the world in recent years, but growth has completely outstripped investment in infrastructure. Despite rising incomes, the housing market has been neglected and this has led to a yawning gap in middle-income properties. On the one hand, 90% of Ghana’s urban housing is informal, much of it in slums on the outskirts of cities; on the other hand, plush gated communities and mansion complexes have sprung up to cater for the new super-wealthy.

Many middle-income Ghanaians, faced with a choice between exorbitantly-priced real estate and slum conditions, have thus been forced further and further out to the edges of cities where house prices and landlords may be more reasonable. The resulting commute, however, can stretch to three hours, and many leave their homes well before dawn to beat the heavy traffic.

Profit-seeking rent-seeking

Around half of Ghana’s 25 million residents now live in urban areas, and suburban sprawl has subsumed towns near major cities. To deal with these growing urban populations, UN Habitat estimates that 5.7 million new rooms – or 2 million new households – will be required by 2020; “If these are to be successfully supplied, 3.8 new rooms must be completed in every minute of the working day for ten years,” the report calculates dramatically.

However, Ghana is nowhere near this target, and the only significant housing developments being built in the heart of Accra are luxury apartments affordable to only a tiny minority of the capital’s 2.3 million population.

"This is without question the biggest problem that Accra faces," says Nat Amarteifio, who was mayor of Accra from 1994 to 1998. He blames much of the housing problems he and his successors have faced to IMF-backed structural adjustment policies of the 1980s and 1990s, which were designed to take the economy out of state control, limiting public spending and investment. These policies inhibited the government’s ability to meet Ghana’s housing needs and instead left the property market in the hands of private companies.

"The market is naturally interested in returns on investment,” says Amarteifio, “and private firms are much more assured of that when dealing with upper income buyers than in building housing for the masses.”

Indeed, private developers have tended to focus heavily on building homes to sell to wealthy Ghanaians who can afford $500,000 apartments, and investors who want to be able to charge $3,000 a month in rent.

A tale of two Accras

The result of this is that Accra tells a tale of two cities. In East Legon, flash mansions owned by footballers, retired politicians and senior civil servants sit alongside informal neighbourhoods in which residents have to put up their own streetlights and dig their own sewage systems. In suburbs like Haatso, homes protected by high walls and electrified razor-wire share space with crammed ad hoc slums.

As you move further out, the tarmac roads start to thin out, replaced by deeply-rutted dirt tracks. Soon the only signs of infrastructure are the towering electricity pylons surrounded by the ruins of the half-built houses that were there first.

Keep going, however, and the number of building sites grows as you drive through neighbourhoods named after the small towns they subsumed – Ashongman, Abokobi, Pantang – until there horizon is dotted with thousands of half-built houses perched on the foothills that mark the border between Greater Accra and the mountains of the Eastern Region.

Those half-built houses – on the outskirts of the region, let alone the city – are the single biggest investment most Ghanaians are likely to ever make. And most are built gradually, some over the course of as much as a decade, because land and construction materials – 80% of which have to be imported – are prohibitively expensive.

According to developers, this is one of the main reasons building affordable housing in Ghana is so difficult. According to Alex Tweneboa, former president of the Ghana Real Estate Developers’ Association, even modest homes can cost around $300 per square-foot to build, taking into account the money spent on building the necessary infrastructure and the costs of construction.

"The biggest factor of all is money," he says. Furthermore with lenders seemingly unwilling to invest much faith in the housing market, he adds: "As a developer, if I'm borrowing in Ghana, I will end up paying close to 40% a year in interest."

Who will build?

The result of all this is that most real estate is out of reach for the vast majority of Ghanaians. Tweneboa, for example, revealed that he had recently sold properties in an Accra suburb to high-ranking employees at banks and insurance companies and claimed that even they could only buy the $30,000 homes because their employers provided cheap mortgages. This suggests the government’s plans to build around 9,000 homes at $25,000 will also price out all but the wealthiest groups of Ghanaians. And according to Tweneboa’s research, a more realistic cost for a home for Ghanaians on middle incomes would be closer to $5,000, and that is with large subsidies and a generous mortgage.

But who will build these homes? The government has largely deferred to the private sector, but as Amarteifio insists, “There's simply no way in which the private sector can meet the demand." According to Tweneboa, there is also little profit-making incentive for private firms to want to build affordable housing.

However, the stakes for Ghana and its urban residents are high, and until a solution is found, shanty towns will continue to pop up in even the fanciest of neighbourhoods, slumlords will carry on making a killing renting wooden shacks and repurposed shipping containers to the limitless stream of people looking for a place to live, and the intense competition for the few decent and affordable properties that do exist in the city will mean rents will keep on rising and rising.

This Article was originally published on Think Africa Press and was written by Yepoka Yeebo- a reporter and photographer currently based in London. See and read more of her work on her website. http://www.yepokayeebo.com/

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Sudan death sentence woman 'freed'

A Sudanese woman sentenced to death for abandoning her Islamic faith has been freed from jail, her lawyer has told the BBC.

Meriam Ibrahim's death penalty was overturned by an appeal court, the official Suna news agency reported.

She is married to a Christian man and was sentenced under Sharia law to hang for apostasy in May after refusing to renounce Christianity.

Her husband, Daniel Wani, said he was looking forward to seeing her.

He wanted his family to leave Sudan as soon possible, Mr Wani, who is a US citizen, told the BBC Focus on Africa radio programme.

The death sentence for Meriam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag, who gave birth to a daughter in prison not long after she was convicted, sparked international outrage.

"We are very very happy about this - and we're going to her now," Mrs Ibrahim's lawyer Elshareef Ali told the BBC.

"They have released her... she's on her way to home," he said.

Mr Ali said Mrs Ibrahim had shown "extraordinary courage" during her ordeal.

"It's a victory for freedom of religion in Sudan... By Mariam's strong position, we believe that in the future no-one will be subjected to such a trial," he said.

Analysis: James Copnall, former BBC Sudan correspondent

The outcry generated by Meriam Ibrahim's case was difficult for the authorities to ignore.

The government in Khartoum is already dealing with an economic crisis, and conflicts in Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile. It simply does not need further ill-feeling - and it is worth pointing out that many of the most vocal opponents of the conviction were Sudanese, not foreigners.

In fact, Mrs Ibrahim's case looks like part of a recurring theme.

In 2009 Lubna Hussein, dubbed the "trouser woman", was arrested for wearing "indecent clothing" in public - in her case a pair of loose green trousers. She was at risk of a public flogging. Eventually she was given a small fine, which was then paid on her behalf to set her free. In 2012, Intisar Sharif Abdullah was sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, before she too was released without charge.

In every case, the authorities insist the justice system came to an independent decision, but many believe it bowed to public pressure.

Born to a Muslim father, Mrs Ibrahim, 27, married Mr Wani, a Christian, in 2011.

She has been in jail since February, along with her young son.

Mr Ali said he had not yet seen the appeal court's judgement, and had learned about the verdict through the media.

Sudan has a majority Muslim population. Islamic law has been in force there since the 1980s.

Even though Mrs Ibrahim was brought up as an Orthodox Christian, the authorities consider her to be a Muslim.

Her husband, who was born in South Sudan before it became independent from Sudan, went to the US in 1998 at the height of the civil war.

He met Mrs Ibrahim in 2011 on a visit to Sudan and they were married at the main church in Khartoum.

this article was originally published in BBC NEWS,

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Children of the Congo who risk their lives to supply our mobile phones

in unsafe mines deep underground in eastern Congo, children are working to extract minerals essential for the electronics industry. The profits from the minerals finance the bloodiest conflict since the second world war; the war has lasted nearly 20 years and has recently flared up again.

In that same 20-year period, the concept of corporate social responsibility in the west has evolved from companies giving employees a gym and having some photo opportunities for the chief executive, to addressing human rights throughout the supply chain, yet ICT companies such as Nokia, Samsung, HTC and Apple still cannot guarantee there will be no child labour used in the manufacturing of their products. There is now an increased focus on the supply chain as a crucial element if a company wants to call itself socially responsible.

For the last 15 years, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been a major source of natural resources for the mobile phone industry. This special relationship has caused incalculable damage.

I have never experienced anything like what I saw the first time I entered the mines of Bisie. Armed groups had made a simple gate of sticks, and everybody going in or out had to pay them money. Around 15-25,000 people were trapped inside this village made of mud and plastic bags.

It was like stepping into the front yard of hell. Women everywhere were calling out their offers of sexual services to bypassers as if they were selling vegetables. Boys as young as 12 stared at us with layers of dried mud on their still-childish cheeks, shy of the bright light after days underground digging out valuable minerals. Everything brought into the village is taxed at the gate; a bottle of water cost several dollars, a kilo of meat cost $12. But because it is more expensive to leave, people stay inside just to get a meal.

There is still hope

It doesn't have to be this way. Fortunately, there are some very powerful tools business can use to help change this. If the will is there, plenty can be done to improve things.

Due diligence must come first. When the electronics industry cannot guarantee that there are no blood minerals in their products, it is because they often do not know who they subcontract to. A guarantee requires that one actually knows one's supply chains. Companies must appoint in-house representatives to get out of their offices and be agents who travel down the supply chain. They should be able to tell the truth about the circumstances when they return – preferably with cameras. Video can be a powerful tool when it comes to understanding the need for policies.

If there are too many weapons in circulation, and it is not safe for an issued agent to investigate whether a mine uses child labour, that is likely to be a very good indicator that one should not source from that particular area.

Transparency is a fantastic tool if one wants to be socially responsible. Warlords finance large-scale killing of civilians with minerals that get melted in Malaysia and then disappear into the undergrowth of subcontractors. Transparency is absolutely crucial when you want to track them down. These supply chains must be published.

It is time that the electronics industries got together to take real action. There is even an industry body set up to help: the Global e-Sustainability Initiative works for responsible ICT-enabled transformation to a sustainable world.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo has been associated with the electronics industry's intoxicating cash flows since the middle of the 1990s; the industry has claimed the lives of more than 5 million people. The case of this country is special, but natural resources becoming a curse for developing countries is far from rare.

We need transparency in business to spot the grim truth. Some things have not changed very much since colonial times, but instead of theft sanctioned by empires, it's now controlled by markets. Especially in Africa, companies operate with super-cynical exploitation of natural resources. Value simply disappears out of the continent without benefiting the local people.

The funding needed for a boost of the developing world lies within the countries themselves, but the power lies with businesses who are willing to pay a fair price for the natural resources they import. For every euro the international community spends on development and humanitarian aid in Africa, 10 euros are going the other way in the form of natural resources. That is certainly not corporate social responsibility.

this article was originally published in 'The Guardian' and was written by Frank Piasecki Poulsen

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Why Wait in the Queue? How Kenya’s Slum Dwellers are Reclaiming their Toilets

In the face of failing sanitation systems, the residents of Mathare are taking matters into their own hands.

Nairobi, Kenya:
A group is gathered around a leaking sewage system, armed with long wooden sticks, spades and rakes. Some wear protective gloves and gumboots, but many do not. Inserting long sticks inside the leaking sewer, they dislodge the papers, garbage and debris blocking it, whilst others move to remove the detritus. It is slow and painstaking work.

This is a regular routine in Mathare, a large slum in Nairobi, Kenya, where lack of sanitation is one of the major problems facing the 600,000 inhabitants. The Kenyan government constructed public latrines here decades ago but the Nairobi City Council failed to maintain or clean them, leading to dilapidation. The slum’s citizens therefore took the maintenance of the latrines – each of which serves over 1,000 people every day – into their own hands.

“We know it’s the work of the Nairobi water and sewer company to unblock the sewerage infrastructure but if we wait for them, more people will die of diarrhoea because that company takes months to respond,” says Stephen Klhara, a 21-year-old nicknamed Igush. He says residents have been forced to volunteer once a month to unblock the sewer themselves.

Spending a penny

The residents have since agreed to privatise the latrines, due to the high cost of their maintenance. It costs five Kenyan Shillings (approximately $0.06) per entry and families qualify for a monthly ticket at KSh300 ($3.40).“I open the toilet at around 5:30am and I clean it. At around 6:00am customers begin flocking in and the toilet is very busy until 9:00am,” says Peter Teresia Nderu, 33, one of the cleaners. Nderu makes around KSh4,000 a day (approximately $45) but faces a constant struggle as the inadequate water supply makes cleaning the latrines difficult.

Many residents cannot afford the new fees and therefore have to use “flying toilets” – so-called because people relieve themselves in a polythene bags and throw them away when no-one is watching – or use open defecation areas or pit latrines. While most of the pit latrines are arranged in channels so the waste flows down to the open river, they are often full so local youths are employed to empty them.

“In Mathare you can’t afford to choose the kind of you work you will do, at the end of the day you have to survive,” says one of the workers, who wished to remain anonymous. The group operates at night, using buckets to drain the waste and dump it in the river. They rarely wear protective gear.

Toilet troubles

Target 7 of the Millennium Development Goals aims to halve the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015. Yet Mathare is certainly not on track to achieve this and the health risks posed by unsafe latrines are manifold here.

According to Dr. Kennedy Otieno, a local doctor, three in ten of his patients suffer from diarrhoea, usually caused by the consumption of contaminated water or food. Most of the contaminated food comes from the roadside markets, which worsens during the rainy seasons. “In most cases, when the sewage system blocks, the waste scatters all over the area giving a chance for insects to quickly and easily contaminate the food nearby,” says Dr. Otieno. “Children are the most affected.”

Teresiah Nyambura has lived in Mathare since the early 1980s. A mother of four, she has suffered diarrhoea more than 20 times and her children’s health has been put at risk. “During the eighties the public toilets were in the worst condition. Whenever the sewers blocked, my house was full of foul smell and my kids often got sick. I had no other place to live and my kids had to deal with the situation. It always got worse when visitors came from upcountry. Most of them would get sick almost immediately.”

Some local organisations have formed partnerships to rehabilitate some of the dilapidated public toilets, in a bid to secure better sanitation.  One organisation, Mathare Association has partnered with The Rotary Club, for example. By replacing leaking ceilings, putting doors on open toilets, installing water tanks and ensuring that the waste is properly channelled into the Nairobi Sewerage System, these groups are helping to improve living conditions for people in Mathare.

In light of the recent election of Uhuru Kenyatta in March 2013, residents have high hopes for the current government. Kenyans recently voted for a new constitution, which stated that more services and resources are to be allocated by county administration, rather than through the old centralised system. Mathare residents hope this will ensure that there are better toilets and safer sewage systems, but only time will tell.

This article originally appeared in think africa press and was written by DAVID KARIUKI

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If it had happened anywhere else, this would be the world's biggest story

If it had happened anywhere else, this would be the world's biggest story.

More than 230 girls disappeared, captured by members of a brutal terrorist group in the dead of night. Their parents are desperate and anguished, angry that their government is not doing enough. The rest of the world is paying little attention.

The tragedy is unfolding in Nigeria, where members of the ultra-radical Islamist group Boko Haram grabbed the girls, most believed to be between 16 and 18, from their dormitories in the middle of the night in mid-April and took them deep into the jungle. A few dozen of the students managed to escape and tell their story. The others have vanished. (Roughly 200 girls remain missing.)

The latest reports from people living in the forest say Boko Haram fighters are sharing the girls, conducting mass marriages, selling them each for $12. One community elder explained the practice as "a medieval kind of slavery."

While much of the world has been consumed with other stories, notably the missing Malaysian plane, the relatives of the kidnapped girls in the small town of Chibok in northeastern Nigeria have struggled for weeks with no resources to help them. The Nigerian government allayed international concerns when it reported -- incorrectly -- that it had rescued most of the girls. But the girls were still in captivity. Their parents raised money to arrange private expeditions into the jungle. They found villagers who had seen the hostages with heavily armed men.

Relatives are holding street protests to demand more help from the government. With a social media push, including a Twitter#BringBackOurGirls campaign, they are seeking help anywhere they can find it.

Nigerians demand government do more to save abducted girls

It's hard to imagine a more compelling, dramatic, heartbreaking story. And this is not a one-off event. This tragedy is driven by forces that will grow stronger and deadlier if the captors manage to succeed.

I think of these girls as trapped in the rubble of a collapsed building. Their mothers and fathers try to dig them out with their bare hands, while the men who brought down the building vow to blow up others. Everyone else walks by, with barely a second glance.

Perhaps this story sounds remote. But at its heart it is a version of the same conflict that drives the fighting in other parts of the world. These young girls, eager for an education, are caught in the crossfire of the war between Islamic radicalism and modernity. It's the Nigerian version of the same dispute that brought 9/11 to the United States; that brought killings to European, Asian and Middle Eastern cities; the same ideological battle that destroyed the lives of millions of people in Afghanistan; that drives many of the fighters in Syria and elsewhere.

In Nigeria, the dispute includes uniquely local factors, but the objectives of Boko Haram sound eerily familiar.

Boko Haram wants to impose its strict interpretation of Sharia -- Islamic law. It operates mostly in the northern part of Nigeria, a country divided between a Muslim-majority north and a Christian-majority south. Islamic rule is its larger objective, but its top priority, judging from the group's name, explains why it has gone after girls going to school.

Boko Haram, in the local Hausa language, means roughly "Western education is sin."

But women are just the beginning, and Boko Haram goes about its goals not only by kidnapping, but also by slaughtering men and women of all ages and of any religion.

These militants view a modern education as an affront, no matter who receives it. In February, they burst into a student dormitory in the northern state of Yobe, where teenage boys were sleeping after a day of classes. They killed about 30 boys, shooting some, hacking others in their beds, slitting the throats of the ones trying to flee. In July, also in Yobe state, they shot 20 students and their teacher.

The gruesome attacks are not restricted to remote areas. A few weeks ago, a bus bombing in the capital of Abuja killed more than 75 people. Boko Haram took responsibility. It was the deadliest terrorist act in the city's history.

Boko Haram has killed thousands of people since 2009 and has caused a humanitarian crisis with a "devastating impact," causing nearly 300,000 to flee their homes, according to Human Rights Watch.

Nigeria is a resource-rich nation whose people live in grinding poverty. It is also plagued with endemic corruption. That triple combination -- poverty, corruption and resource-wealth -- creates fertile ground for strife and extremism. And the instability in Nigeria sends tremors through a fragile region. Boko Haram keeps hideouts and bases along the border with neighboring countries Cameroon and Chad.

This is an international crisis that requires international help. Is there anything anyone can do? Most definitely.

First, it is urgent that the plight of these girls and their families gain the prominence it so clearly deserves.

Global attention will lead to offers for help, to press for action. Just as the intense focus on the missing Malaysian plane and the lost South Korean ferry prompted other nations to extend a hand, a focus on this ongoing tragedy would have the same effect.

Nigeria's government, with a decidedly mixed record on its response to Boko Haram, will find it difficult to look away if world leaders offer assistance in finding and rescuing the kidnapped girls from Chibok, and another 25 girls also kidnapped by Boko Haram in the town of Konduga a few weeks earlier.

This is an important story, a wrenching human drama, even if it happened in a part of the world where news coverage is very difficult compared with places such as Malaysia, South Korea or Australia. The plight of the Nigerian girls should remain in our thoughts, at the forefront of news coverage and on the agenda of world leaders.

This article originally appeared in CNN And written by Frida Ghitis

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Show us the money - transparency and resource wealth in Africa

BARELY a month goes by without a new oil discovery in Africa. Only five of the continent’s 55 countries are neither producing nor exploring for oil. Most places are also extracting lots of lucrative minerals. A resource bonanza is in train across the continent, generating big government revenues and real benefits for Africans. Road networks are expanding, public services are improving. But most of this happens behind a veil of secrecy. Money sloshes out of public scrutiny at the insistence of officials and politicians who prefer it

that way.

Even if squeaky-clean Western multinationals are involved, transparency over payments for resources is minimal. Ordinary people can rarely find out how much goes into government kitties. That makes it easier for insiders to line their pockets. Monitoring groups say corruption has been rising. Ministerial car parks are filled with the fanciest limousines. A lot of money still reaches public budgets, but without oversight it is often badly spent. Many new roads go nowhere or are barely used; shiny new hospitals are often understaffed.

The resulting frustration can trigger violence. In Angola, Africa’s second-biggest oil producer, activists have been demanding a fairer distribution of revenues; the government has responded with a bloody crackdown (see article). South Africa has just seen the worst disturbances since the apartheid era, with 34 platinum miners shot dead during a wildcat strike. Resources can also fuel international conflicts. The two Sudans went to the brink of war earlier this year over oil.

African governments have become more democratic and better at delivering services. Yet the combination of rising mineral wealth and continuing poverty is explosive. After decades of misrule, even the most competent officials are often suspected of pinching funds. More transparency is what is needed to ensure that resource wealth is used better and distributed more fairly. Much of Angola’s income is managed by a national oil company that is shielded from oversight by commercial secrecy. The oil revenues of Equatorial Guinea, where three-quarters of the population live below the poverty line, are a state secret. This is both wrong and dangerous.

The challenge for Western firms and governments is how to help African citizens wheedle data out of their governments so as to hold them more to account. A decade ago Britain’s Tony Blair had a go, promoting the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. As many as three dozen countries, in Africa and elsewhere, agreed to publish details of payments from oil and mining companies. But the scheme was voluntary; the worst offenders either refused to join or dragged their feet.

Follow America’s lead

America’s Securities and Exchange Commission has now come up with a set of rules. The 1,100 resource companies listed on American stock exchanges, which make up half the global industry by value, will be required to publish all payments to foreign governments above $100,000. The European Union is talking of introducing similar requirements. It should do so.

Some Western investors say such rules involve costly red tape. Without some hidden payments to officials, business will be lost, they add. Divulging the details of every deal will give secrets away to competitors. Moreover, non-Western companies, especially Chinese ones, will gain an advantage because they will escape such scrutiny.

The bureaucratic cost will not be large, since companies will merely have to make public figures that are currently held privately. And some Chinese firms will find themselves subject to similar requirements, because many are, or plan to be, listed in America. Moreover, if the West changes its behaviour, China may too. After years of claiming that, unlike Western imperialists, it supports Africa’s people, not its dictators, it may feel it has to back the publication of data about payments.

But there is no guarantee that China will see the light; and, in the meantime, Western companies are likely to find themselves at a disadvantage. So be it. Western countries already spend money and political capital on trying to promote democracy, encourage development and discourage corruption in Africa. Helping Africa 
use its mineral wealth to achieve those ends is worth paying a price for

This article originally appeared in The Economist

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