Abstract
Housing is central to meeting the Sustainable Development Goals in Africa. Housing holds everything together and reflects on social/economic inequality and injustice, poor infrastructure development, and poor health outcomes. To have a housing system that works for all, it is necessary to have a holistic housing policy. While the blame for Africa’s housing woes has been laid on lack of funding, corruption, poor land management system and overpopulation for too long, the causes of Africa’s housing problems go far much deeper. The aim of this chapter is to present a new approach to the problems of housing, identifying strategic as well as historical causes of the problems. The study notes that the foundation of the problem of housing was laid when, at independence, politicians and policymakers missed the opportunity to implement the recommendations of the expert committee of the Economic Commission for Africa at its 1963 meeting. This was the road not taken and, more than 50 years later, the consequences of this missed opportunity remain abiding. The chapter concludes that without robust policies to enable housing to become a key driver of economic, social and infrastructural development, meeting the SDG goals will remain a difficult goal to attain.
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Notes
- 1.
Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, also called Central African Federation, political unit created in 1953 and ended on Dec. 31, 1963, that embraced the British settler-dominated colony of Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and the territories of Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malaŵi), which were under the control of the British Colonial Office. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
- 2.
Tanganyika, historical eastern African state that in 1964 merged with Zanzibar to form the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, later renamed the United Republic of Tanzania. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
- 3.
Soviet Union, in full Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.), Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik or Sovetsky Soyuz, former northern Eurasian empire (1917/22–1991) stretching from the Baltic and Black seas to the Pacific Ocean and, in its final years, consisting of 15 Soviet Socialist Republics (S.S.R.’s): Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belorussia (now Belarus), Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kirgiziya (now Kyrgyzstan), Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia (now Moldova), Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. The capital was Moscow, then and now the capital of Russia.
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Olowoyeye, A.A. (2021). The Road not Taken: Policy and Politics of Housing Management in Africa. In: Nubi, T.G., Anderson, I., Lawanson, T., Oyalowo, B. (eds) Housing and SDGs in Urban Africa. Advances in 21st Century Human Settlements. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4424-2_3
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