In an effort to address the significant housing demand and supply gap in Ethiopia, the government has announced plans to partner with private developers for the construction of 79,800 affordable housing units through public-private partnership (PPP) arrangements.
The initiative comes as a response to the shortcomings of the previous low-cost condominium housing project, which aimed to provide housing for one million residents in Addis Ababa but fell significantly short due to construction delays and budget shortages.
Over the past two years, the Addis Ababa City Administration has made several attempts to organize house seekers into cooperatives and allocate land for them.
Additionally, an agreement was reached with real estate developers, whereby developers were granted land in exchange for directly providing 30 percent of the housing units they constructed to the city administration.
The Ministry of Finance yesterday announced a request for qualification for the construction of 79,800 affordable housing units, stating that the housing units will be developed in phases by various contracting authorities.
The initial phase will be implemented by private developers on behalf of the Federal Housing Corporation (FHC) and the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation (EBC), which requires housing units for its employees.
The FHC, a subsidiary of the Ethiopian Investment Holdings (EHI), expects more than 1,600 mixed-use housing units to be developed through the PPP arrangement by private developers. Similarly, the EBC anticipates the construction of over 2,000 mixed-use housing units.
To gauge private sector interest and gather additional inputs to make the project more attractive to developers, a call for Expression of Interest (EoI) was issued on November 12, 2023, by the Ministry of Finance.
Following the receipt of expressions of interest from various private companies, the PPP Department under the Finance Ministry is now announcing the first stage of procurement, the Request for Prequalification (RFQ). This stage aims to identify potential and qualified private developers for the subsequent Request for Proposal (RFP) stage.
