The Federal Government has attracted interest from African countries seeking to replicate Nigeria’s housing delivery model, which leverages private investment, concessional loans and guaranteed buyers to deliver 100,000 homes without direct public financing of construction.
The Renewed Hope Housing Public-Private Partnership model was presented by the Director-General of the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission, Dr Jobson Ewalefoh, at the Second Forum for Public-Private Partnership Units in Africa in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
A statement issued by the Acting Head of Media and Publicity, Ifeanyi Nwoko, on Monday said delegates from 36 countries attended the forum, which focused on making public-private partnerships work in social sectors, including housing, healthcare, education, sanitation and water.
Nigeria was among five countries selected to present projects at the forum’s project clinic, alongside Malawi, Kenya, Djibouti and Côte d’Ivoire.
The statement read, “The Federal Government has presented its Renewed Hope Housing Public-Private Partnership model at a continental forum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where African countries showed strong interest in replicating it in their own housing programmes.”
Speaking for the Nigerian delegation, Ewalefoh said the Renewed Hope Cities programme would deliver 100,000 housing units across selected Nigerian cities through a joint venture concession with private sector partners.
“The beauty of this PPP structure is that it is not the conventional PPP. In this case, the private party owns the land, has the design, is financing it and is doing the construction,” he said.
Under the model, the Federal Government’s role is to reduce investment risks and create the conditions necessary for private developers to deliver homes at affordable prices.
“The PPP here is that the government agreed to de-risk the project,” Ewalefoh said.
He explained that the arrangement was designed to address the financing constraints facing housing developers in Nigeria, where commercial lending rates exceed 23 per cent, making it difficult to finance large-scale housing projects at market rates.
Rather than pay for construction directly, the government deployed several measures to attract private capital and improve affordability.
These include guaranteeing demand by identifying middle-income federal civil servants as prospective off-takers, providing access roads to the semi-urban project sites and securing concessional financing through public institutions.
According to the statement, about $19m in single-digit interest funding was unlocked through the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria, while the Family Homes Fund provided a further $20m in concessionary loans.
Homebuyers are also expected to benefit from lower mortgage rates through an approximately `$112m MOFI Real Estate Investment Fund.
The government and the developer negotiated sale prices to keep the houses affordable, while a restriction limiting each buyer to one unit was introduced to discourage speculative purchases.
The measures, according to the ICRC chief, have reduced the effective cost of the project by about 30 per cent.
The structure is expected to mobilise approximately 39m in concessionary funding helping to unlock the project.
Ewalefoh told delegates that the model demonstrated how governments could expand housing supply without bearing the full cost of construction.
“The structure means the government is delivering homes without funding their construction. About $39 million in concessionary funding is helping to unlock a project whose construction cost now stands at about $125 million in private sector investment.
“Government does not need to finance housing capital projects. It can crowd in private capital through policy, land availability and off-taker facilitation to create a replicable, scalable model for housing delivery,” he said.
The Nigerian model generated considerable interest during the question-and-answer session, with delegates seeking details on how its risk-sharing arrangements could be adapted to their respective countries.
Particular attention was given to the use of guaranteed off-takers to provide developers with a more predictable market and concessional financing to reduce the cost of delivering homes.
The forum was co-organised by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the African Development Bank and the African Legal Support Facility under the theme, “Making Social Sector PPPs Work: From Policy Ambition to Effective Service Delivery”.
Held at Africa Hall, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the two-day event brought together heads of PPP units, development finance institutions, private operators and transaction advisers to examine how private investment could support essential public services.
Discussions covered risk allocation, availability payments, viability gap funding, subnational PPP arrangements and contract management.
Unlike roads, ports and power plants, social infrastructure often generates insufficient revenue from user charges to recover investment costs. This makes affordability, fiscal sustainability and accountability central to the design of such partnerships.
The delegation also learnt from other countries’ projects, including their approaches to structuring transactions, allocating risks and implementing social sector partnerships.
The lessons, the statement said, would help inform Nigeria’s own pipeline of social infrastructure PPP projects.
The forum built on its inaugural edition in 2024, which brought together more than 30 African PPP units to discuss climate-resilient infrastructure.