Page 8 - Newsletter

Informative Piece

HOME AFRIKA: A Property

Development Company

Providing Homes for All

(By MarcoPolis)

Interview with Dan Awendo - Managing Director of Home Afrika

In Kenya, 60% of households are considered to be living in Home Afrika seeks to create communities around Africa by
inadequate housing; 150,000 units are required annually, building quality, sustainable and affordable housing. How
however only 30,000 units are constructed. What is your would you describe Home Afrika’s philosophy and what
assessment of the country’s property development sector? makes you different from the competition?

In recent history, Kenya has been building more units than We are certainly not the only ones exploring this market. If
before. Therefore, even though we are producing 30,000 to you think about the large demand of 150,000 homes a year,
35,000 units a year, we used to build much fewer units than you’ll see that this cannot be done by a single company, not
that, maybe half that number, before the Year 2000. only because we don’t have the resources, but also because
The property development sector has only recently taken an we still don’t have deeply capacitated construction
upward trajectory. companies that can deliver this number of units.

There aren’t many developers in the market, and many of We need partnerships and companies working together to be
them focus on medium and high income property sectors, able to develop this number of units per year. At the end of
and not on the low income sector, where most of the housing the day, our philosophy revolves around providing security
demand exists. Middle to high income property and for the low income earner, which comes from owning a
commercial property sectors are quite well taken care of, but home. In economies like Singapore, a majority of the
there is still very low development. The main gap exists in the population owns their homes, and it is said to increase their
low income sector, because that is where the demand for productivity by 30% to 40%. That is the kind of productivity
most of the 150,000 units a year exists. catalyst we would like to offer our own people.

Home Afrika is a property development company If we provide homes for all, we provide security for them and
incorporated in 2008, founded on key principles of “homes improve their capacity to produce, for themselves, for their
for all” and “economic empowerment through home families and for the society at large. In the next couple of
ownership”. Can you give us an overview of the company’s years, we intend to narrow our focus to the affordable
history and its main areas of operation and projects? housing and low-income housing space.

We started as a group of friends who came together mainly What are the most important projects you are working on at
for professional reasons. We were architects, engineers, the moment?
financial experts and so forth. Individually, we were working
in property development, but on a small scale. We thought of Right now we have three (3) main projects:
setting up Home Afrika to create much more value and
develop larger projects, with more capital funding. That was The first one is Migaa, an integrated golf estate on a 774-acre
our dream when we started out. land parcel, within Kiambu County. The project features
hospitality, commercial buildings, shopping malls, a sports
Over time, even though we had spent time developing complex and an 18-hole championship golf course. It is now
different projects, we continued to keep our focus on “Homes 45% complete. We still have a lot of investment to do,
for all”. “Homes for all” means that we are targeting the particularly in infrastructure, and we hope to succeed in
demand space that is not being covered to date. That fundraising by mid 2017 to complete this project. We expect
demand is in the affordable housing and low income sector. to provide approximately 4,000 households a place to work,
We continue to reiterate that this is the area we really want live and play by the end of 2018. The facility we are creating
to spend our time on - our initial projects were aimed to help within Migaa Golf Estate aims to provide a comprehensive
us improve our resource base so that later we could focus on lifestyle for medium income families. This is currently our
our core business. largest project.

In Kisumu, we have a 96-acre land bank. The idea is to
develop a convention center, a four star hotel and housing