12 million housing units needed, Minister says

Lugolobi, whose message was delivered by National Planning Authority board member Lydia Wanyoto at the 12^th National Development Forum, said the units must be connected to electricity, safe water, and sanitation facilities as envisioned in vision 2040.

He said statistics indicate that the majority of housing stock in Uganda is of poor quality with 71 per cent temporary, 11 per cent semi-permanent and only 18 per cent with permanent materials. Lugoloobi said such statistics are unacceptable as the country aspires to the middle-income status.

The 12th National Development Forum was organised to address Uganda’s affordable Housing deficit.

According to the Uganda National Household Survey 2020 which was conducted by Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS), Uganda’s housing deficit currently stands at 2.4 million housing units, of which 210,000 units are in urban areas and 1.395 million units in rural areas. About 900,000 housing units in the country are below standard.

According to populationPyramid.Net, a world population portal, Uganda’s population is projected to have grown to 89 million by 2050. Experts have however advised Government to devise ways of solving the housing challenge in Uganda to cater for the ever-growing population.

The managing director Abja Estates, Jane Acilo, says the challenge can be solved starting with fixing some of the challenges the real estate sector is facing.

“The first factor that determines the price of a house is the cost at which the plot of land was bought. Considering the fact that the growth of Uganda’s economy has stagnated at around 5% for the last decade (World Bank), it is right to argue that land prices have unnecessarily skyrocketed, thus distorting the market. This were Government needs to come in and find ways of regulating land prices,” she says.

Acilo also says that there’s a challenge of expensive raw materials needed for housing construction which makes construction of houses expensive.