Guest editorial

Citation

Brown, S. (2007), "Guest editorial", Property Management, Vol. 25 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/pm.2007.11325aaa.001

Guest editorial

Our views and impressions of issues beyond our immediate environment are often shaped and formed by external media – we are, to some extent, dependent on them to provide the raw material for our deeper understanding. Yet, we run the risk of being provided with incomplete or imperfect information on these issues. Such a situation may well hold when we think about Africa. If Africa makes the news at all, which is not always the case, the stories and reports that we hear are invariably depressing and, in many ways, serve to reinforce many of the stereotypes that exist about this vast and diverse continent. For, what we do not generally hear about is the hard-earned and not always steady progress that is being made in many countries in Africa to transform their societies and economies to ones where they can begin to enjoy the fruits and benefits of greater freedom and prosperity.

I have been privileged to be invited to put together this special issue of Property Management, and the papers that I have selected for this reflect many of these changes that are taking place. The names will, for the most part, be unfamiliar to readers – these are authors who have not published regularly or contributed to the academic debate on real estate in the more established learned journals. For too long, their voice has not been heard and this issue is, I hope, a first step in encouraging these researchers to join the mainstream and to bring their views and perspectives to a wider audience. I hope that you enjoy reading them.

The first paper by K.K. Adarkwa and R.A. Oppong of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana reminds us that, though great progress is being made in Africa, poverty still remains, particularly in rural areas. This paper assesses the impact of schemes implemented by Habitat for Humanity International in a number of rural areas in Ghana. It suggests that the approach that they adopt, through careful planning of the settlements, can have a major impact on poverty reduction through such factors as the increased formation of micro-enterprises, skills transfer and enhanced access to social services.

It is rare for papers from Ethiopia to feature in the mainstream property research journals, so it is particularly welcome to have a contribution from A. Tesfaye of the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia, looking at problems of affordable housing delivery in Ethiopia. In contrast to the previous paper, this focuses on the situation in urban areas – about 15 per cent of the total population of Ethiopia lives in Addis Ababa, and the level of housing development is totally inadequate to meet the needs of this population. Although the Ethiopian government has published a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper which will help to address issues of both urban and rural poverty, the degree to which it can be implemented depends on the willingness of foreign donors to support it.

An issue that recurs across Africa is highlighted in the paper by E. Chapinduka Nyasulu and C. Cloete of the University of Pretoria, South Africa, is the lack of mortgage finance. In their paper on affordable housing in Malawi, the lack of access to finance emerges as one of the key issues hampering the provision of affordable housing. They recommend that, given the unavailability of conventional finance for housing, new sources of funds should be explored.

The final paper on housing in this issue, by S. Roubi of Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland, and Ashraf Ghazaly, Coldwell Banker Egypt, explores an altogether different housing market – the rental apartment market in Cairo, Egypt. Here, there is a much more dynamic market, and the authors have been able to undertake the type of analysis that we are familiar with for more mature housing markets.

Another major factor in development in Africa relates to the role of women, and the paper by K. Kajimo-Shakantu and K. Evans of the University of Cape Town, South Africa, looks at the role of women’s savings in financing urban development in South Africa. This paper suggests that it might be possible to integrate the largely informal savings schemes that have emerged aimed at women into the formal financial system. However, at the moment, the banks are not structured to take advantage of this source of funds, and the paper suggests that intermediaries would need to be set up to link women’s saving schemes with the banks.

The final paper, by B.T. Aluko of Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria, looks at the valuation of residential properties in Lagos. Using a methodology similar to a number of seminal valuation studies in the UK, this paper considers the degree to which valuers agree or differ on the value of a particular property. It finds that there were quite considerable variations in the values proposed, and suggest that there is a need for the development of more robust and rigorous market databases and indices. We have seen the value of these in the UK and, indeed, it is remarkable to think that it is only relatively recently that such indices were introduced into the UK market.

I would hope that this will not be the last time that researchers from Africa present their work in these pages – they have much to learn from more established researchers but, as the world becomes increasingly interconnected, we also have much to learn from them.

Stephen BrownHead of Research, Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors