President William Ruto has announced that the government will hand over 55,000 affordable housing units before the end of the year, saying Kenya is currently implementing what he described as the largest housing programme in Africa.
Speaking at the 13th World Urban Forum in Baku, Azerbaijan, Ruto said 8,000 housing keys had already been issued under the programme, while another 273,000 units were under construction across the country.
“We are building 273,000 housing units, 8,000 keys have been handed over, 55,000 keys will be handed over before the end of this year, and we have a pipeline of 700,000 housing units,” he said.
Ruto used the global forum to defend Kenya’s affordable housing agenda, arguing that the country had taken deliberate steps to tackle rising urbanization, slum growth and inadequate housing.
“Statistics show us that 3 billion people suffer from inadequate housing, 1 billion people live in slums, and 300 million people are homeless,” he said. “These are not just statistics, these are people, these are families, these are children.”
The president said Kenya currently has more than 1,100 informal settlements housing about seven million people, forcing the government to prioritise affordable housing as a key pillar of its development strategy.
According to Ruto, the government addressed three major obstacles to housing: land availability, construction costs and financing.
He said all public land earmarked for housing projects had been made available free of charge, reducing housing costs by about 30 per cent.
The government also negotiated lower supervision costs with architects, engineers and quantity surveyors while standardizing construction materials and housing designs to lower building expenses.
“We standardized construction sizes and materials so that they can be produced en masse and reduce costs,” Ruto said.
On financing, the president defended the controversial housing levy, saying it had enabled Kenya to mobilize five billion dollars locally without relying on foreign borrowing.
“We haven’t borrowed a single shilling from the World Bank or any other institution. This is locally mobilized resources,” he said.
Ruto added that the programme had already created jobs for more than 640,000 young people, including masons, electricians, carpenters, architects and engineers.
He also said the government had begun replacing slums in Nairobi with high-rise affordable housing units, arguing that residents could now access dignified housing at costs similar to informal settlements.
“The cost of a social house on the 11th floor is the same as the cost of a slum dwelling house,” he said.
Beyond housing, Ruto called for reforms to global financial institutions and the United Nations Security Council, saying African countries faced unfair borrowing costs despite carrying some of the world’s biggest development challenges.