Home-Grown Growth in African Cities: How Self-Build Housing Drives Urban and Economic Growth in Ghana and Tanzania

This research investigates the drivers of urbanisation in two countries in Africa which have unprecedented rates of urban growth. It will study the economy of self-build housing in two established cities and two fast growing towns in Ghana and Tanzania. Understanding what drives rapid urban growth is an urgent priority for governments striving to ensure that housing, services and infrastructure keep pace with rising populations. Our project investigates how peoples' desire to improve their lives by building better housing affects the growth of towns and cities and how the goods, services and assets generated through self-organised house-building contribute to the wider economy.

Our research will provide an account of the economy of self-built urban housing in Ghana and Tanzania in order to demonstrate how important such activity is for economic mobility and financing further urban development. Most academic and policy work on self-built housing in the global south has focused on negative impacts, including high density informal settlements where people live in extreme poverty. In much of Africa self-building is usual across all income groups and fuels the growth of all types of urban areas, from high-density informal settlements to better quality residential neighbourhoods developed by higher income residents. Over time self-build housing creates capital stock and income opportunities that provide a catalyst for residential and social mobility.

This project empirically investigates how the economy of self-build housing in Accra and Techiman (Ghana), and Dar es Salaam and Ifakara (Tanzania) contributes to urban and economic growth. Accelerating urbanisation in established cities and small towns is driven by people acquiring plots of land and building houses gradually while renting space within them to lower income tenants and conducting businesses in and from housing. We will examine how this 'housing economy' operates in the absence of formal financial institutions, creating substantial opportunities for income, employment and asset generation which accelerate urban and economic growth.

The project's aims are expressed as three research questions:
1. how do people living in urban areas access housing as tenants or owners and how do they gain resources to acquire, finance and improve their homes?
2. how does self-organised construction contribute to the economies of urban areas?
3. how does the economy of self-build housing affect social mobility, inequality and neighbourhood change?

The objectives of the research will be delivered through three work packages which are designed to achieve the aims:
1. We will use semi-structured interviews to show how people rent, build and make assets out of houses.
2. We will use observation and interviews with builders, owners and renters, to describe how the economy of self-build housing creates services and employment.
3. We will use interviews, oral histories, house tours and archival research to construct histories of the case study neighbourhoods in the four towns and cities and of plots within them, and to investigate asset accumulation, neighbourhood improvement and social differentiation.

The research has been designed in collaboration with academic and policy partners in Ghana and Tanzania. It will fill an important gap in knowledge of the processes and experiences of urban land and housing markets in African cities, and how policy-makers could work with the opportunities presented by non-industrial pathways to economic growth.