Up to 1 million in cash to move in: The scandal of the conditions for entering the housing market in Abidjan

Véronique and Faustin Kla have been searching for a house in Abidjan, the economic capital of Ivory Coast, for months. They are tired of having to adjust their finances to find a place where they will raise their one-year-old son, Junior.

“We had a budget of 80,000 CFA francs (122 euros), but by dragging on with the research, we raised it a little to 100,000 francs (152 euros),” Faustin Kla explained to AFP during a visit, looking discouraged.

As in many growing metropolises on the continent, finding affordable housing where it is good to live is an increasingly costly headache for the inhabitants of Abidjan.

In May, in a report, the United Nations agency for cities and housing, UN-Habitat, indicated that sub-Saharan Africa had the highest rate in the world (55%) of "rent inaccessibility", defined as households spending more than 30% of their income on rent payments.

However, the urban population in Africa is expected to increase from 700 million to 1.4 billion people by 2050, creating around twenty megacities with more than 10 million inhabitants, according to the African Union.

In Abidjan, the population has doubled in 20 years to exceed six million inhabitants, but the supply of housing remains insufficient.

And although Ivory Coast has experienced an economic boom for more than a decade, the minimum wage of 75,000 CFA francs (114.33 euros) is not enough to afford decent housing.

As a result, thousands of people end up settling in precarious areas, sometimes prone to flooding and where construction is prohibited, where the government has recently carried out violent eviction and demolition operations.

Alongside her husband, Véronique Kla loses patience.

“The houses are too expensive,” she complains, also criticizing their standard and difficult access — here, narrow sandy roads with bumps and potholes.

“ Unprecedented situation”

In Abidjan, each viewing of a property costs between 5,000 and 10,000 CFA francs (between 7.60 and 15.24 euros), paid to a real estate agent sometimes operating outside of any legal framework, even if the property is not suitable.

Eric Djédjé says he paid the price for two months of searching, before finding his house in the streets of the Cocody district.

Relieved after his final visit, he signs his rental contract but faces a new difficulty: the entry conditions.

If the price of his accommodation is set at 180,000 CFA francs (274.40 euros) per month, he will have to pay in cash "a total amount of one million francs" (1,524.50 euros), the owner, Aboubacar Bamba, informs him.

The sum includes "two months' deposit, two months' advance payment, one month's rent for the broker (real estate agent), the costs of installing the water and electricity meters, as well as other ancillary costs," the owner explains.

It is not possible to pay in installments, adds Mr. Bamba, who owns dozens of apartments in several districts of the vast metropolis.

Other people face yet another obstacle: proving their solvency, when the informal sector employs around 90% of the country's workforce.

“The current situation is unprecedented,” says Yao Ernest Kouadio, a teacher-researcher in geography at the University of Cocody, specializing in urban planning issues.

“The government’s policy (regarding housing supply) has not kept pace with the population explosion in Abidjan,” he explains, adding that “there have never been so many precarious neighborhoods.”

800,000 missing homes

Wayiribe Ouattara, an urban planner, believes that the majority of Ivorians migrate to Abidjan for job opportunities. The city "concentrates economic activities with the port, the airport, the major schools and especially all the ministries," he says.

Paul Coulibaly, a student, is looking for a house for his aunt who lives in Gagnoa, in the center of the country, and was recently transferred to the economic capital. There too, the budget had to be increased, because with 150,000 CFA francs (228.67 euros), it's impossible to find a house, according to him.

The strong pressure on land also affects the cost of tens of thousands of so-called social housing units, which are supposed to be affordable, according to the urban planner.

But when purchased, they sometimes cost "25, 27 or even 30 million" CFA francs, or more than 45,000 euros. "How many people can afford this housing?" asks Mr. Ouattara, who also deplores the cumbersome administrative process required to benefit from it.

According to the government, Ivory Coast has a housing deficit of 800,000 units, which is increasing by at least 5% each year. It plans to build 150,000 new homes by 2030.