Growth and Employment (GEM) Project, with the aim of helping businesses grow, has identified rise in population as a major contributor, among others, that aids the growth of the Nigeria’s construction industry.
According to Ndah Abu, assistant project coordinator of the project, this trend is followed by a rising middle class with their demand for better conditions – like better houses, road networks and societal needs of social infrastructure.
Abu said unfortunately, most urban areas in Nigeria have crowded cities that are not economically dense, and investments in infrastructure, industrial and commercial structures have not kept pace with the concentration of people, nor have investments in affordable formal housing matched the urbanisation trend in Nigeria.
“It is based on the foregoing that the GEM project focuses on supporting interventions that promote affordable housing in Nigeria,” he said.
“The first phase of the intervention was to develop a Standard Manual for affordable housing in Nigeria. The manual has been validated by stakeholders in the construction industry.
“This support became necessary given the high rate of unoccupied housing projects in most urban cities. Moreover, there is no generally acceptable standard to guide affordable housing projects in Nigeria. Developers seem to rely heavily on inadequate information in making their business decisions, leading to low capacity utilization in the sector,” Abu said.
This information gap, according to Abu, informed GEM’s second phase of support to the Nigerian housing sector. Although the housing market appears to have a lot of challenges, there is paucity of housing statistics to reveal its true state, he said.
Consequently, investors’ perception about the market remains hinged on myths rather than empirical evidence. Unfortunately, there are huge unaccounted economic and financial activities taking place within the sector. The growing concern lies with the fact that these activities, if not properly aligned with realistic economic indicators can send the wrong signals that can potentially deplete profit level and scare capital investments in the sector.
In the process of improving housing deficiency in the country, the GEM Project noted a significant decline of skilled artisans in the Nigerian construction industry in spite of the recent construction boom in and around major cities and peri-urban areas.
Abu said, “The GEM Project identified the artisanal sector as a productive area for investment in terms of job creation and value addition. Artisans are known to be indispensable assets, from the inception of a construction project to acquisition of building materials, tools, equipment and finishing.”
GEM has also realised that in spite of their importance, most construction firms in Nigeria do not invest in artisan skills training due to the inherent costs associated.
“GEM is therefore supporting consortiums of 26 housing developers in collaboration with the Kaduna State Government and the National Open University in the training of local artisans on modern construction skills.
“During the first phase of the support (2016/2017), about 800 trainees were successfully trained and more than 500 placed on various jobs. The 1st graduation ceremony of the first batch of trainees from the centre has been scheduled to hold by August 2018.
“The business opportunities that arise from this support have necessitated the consortiums to expand their capacity to accommodate more local artisans. The programme is envisaged to train about 1,800 trainees annually. This number is expected to grow by 10% each year for the next five years.
“More than half of the trainees will be retained under the programme’s job outsourcing unit. Others will be linked to employers of labour for permanent job placement. By 2022, an estimated total of 12,600 trainees would have been trained and certified,” Abu said.
