Investors have been urged to prioritise the real estate sector as the City of Kigali continues to advocate for the construction of housing units that are affordable for city dwellers. The call was made during the Kigali Investment Forum meeting held in Kigali, on Monday.

Providing affordable housing remains one of the biggest challenges in the country, as most of the key players in real estate, are eying the high end customers. This has left the low income earners with no chance of owning affordable decent homes. Most of the houses on the market are too expensive for them to afford.

According to the Ministry for Infrastructure, Rwanda will need 560,000 affordable housing units by 2020. To be able to satisfy this demand, 93,400 affordable units have to be constructed annually (or 7,780 units monthly).

Since the private sector is reluctant to invest in low income housing estates, government must strike a balance and enter into public-private partnerships to address this challenge. Although, government has in the past initiated similar partnerships, more needs to be done if the housing issue is to be addressed.

Government and the private players should partner to invest more in low cost housing projects. This is one of the ways that will lure the private investors to venture into real estate targeting low income earners.

Also, government should put in place special incentives for any real estate investor specifically targeting low income earners.

Real estate experts have on various platforms argued that increased involvement of government, especially by giving tax waivers and other sector targeted incentives to encourage developers to cut prices of homes, will spur the affordable housing initiative. This could attract more developers into what is called a less attractive market that has low returns and a lot of challenges.