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Affordable housing project launched for Osona and Otjomuise

Affordable housing project launched for Osona and Otjomuise

The Minister of Urban and Rural Development, Erastus Uutoni this week launched an affordable housing project by Namibia International Capital, consisting of 42 units at Osona Village and 90 units at Otjomuise.

The project received bulk of its funding from Shelter Afrique, a Pan-African Housing Financing Company to which Namibia is a shareholding member. Funds from Shelter Afrique amount to N$150 million, while the Namibian government gave N$50 million and the National Housing Enterprise gave N$7 million towards the project.

The project was officially launched at Osona Village on 29 April. Namibia International Capital, a foreign company that made Namibia its business location since 2017, has a target of introducing at least 500 affordable houses per year.

Speaking at the launch, Uutoni said Osona Village development is a good example of what a well structured win-win partnership between public and private sector institutions can do to contribute towards the realization of the country’s national goals on housing and serviced land delivery.

“I wish to challenge Namibia International Capital and Shelter Afrique to do more and increase their footprint in Namibia in general and especially affordable social housing space. By extension, I am also calling on other financiers and developers, local and foreign, to join GIPF, Preferred Management Services, Shelter Afrique and Namibia International Capital to scale up the supply of truly affordable serviced land and housing units for our people,” Uutoni said.

Uutoni said the Namibian housing situation can generally be attributed to the rate of urbanisation outstripping the rate at which serviced urban land and basic services as well as housing are delivered.

“In order words, the scarcity of available serviced land is both pushing up the prices of serviced land and also slowing down the process of housing delivery, and is thus the main challenge facing our housing sector,” he said.


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Minister of Urban and Rural Development, Erastus Uutoni (left) and Dr Libertina Amathila (far right), former politician and Patron of Osona Village at the bricklaying ceremony in Okahandja.


 

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Donald Matthys

Donald Matthys has been part of the media fraternity since 2015. He has been working at the Namibia Economist for the past three years mainly covering business, tourism and agriculture. Donald occasionally refers to himself as a theatre maker and has staged two theatre plays so far. Follow him on twitter at @zuleitmatthys