Rwanda will launch a study to establish the level of the low-cost housing gap as it prepares for rapid urbanisation of the country.

Officials say the lack of reliable data has been one of the factors holding back proper planning and decision-making by developers seeking to tap into the fast-growing housing sector.

According to Didier Sagashya, the director general of the Rwanda Housing Authority, which is the housing sector regulator, the study, to be commissioned soon, will reveal the broader picture of the housing problem in Rwanda with tangible data for all 27 district cities nationwide.

“The study’s findings will help us get clear and reliable data to guide us in the planning. We were relying on assumptions based on the data of Kigali City alone,” he said.

Except for Kigali, the capital city, all other urban centres including secondary cities do not have housing databases to inform solutions to the growing housing shortage.

The 2012 data for Kigali City indicated that 344,048 dwelling units would be needed to meet the capital’s growing demand for housing by 2022.

This could signal a similar trend across Rwanda’s other popular secondary cities like Musanze, Huye and Rubavu, among others that have seen rapid expansion over the past few years thanks to an ever increasing rural urban migration.

Although the government has been coming up with projects that sought to increase the stock of housing, these have come under criticism from a section of the legislature who say, most of them have focused on the well-to-do people, with little focus on the lower income earners and the poor who make up a significant number of the urban dwellers and would therefore need low-cost housing.

Examples given included investments by the Rwanda Social Security Board (RSSB), the workers’ pension scheme, in developing middle-class gated communities, where a unit costs between Rwf75 million ($89,000), and Rwf120 million ($142,000).

The government has announced housing projects that are expected to add over 4,000 houses to the current stock at a cost of between Rwf15 million ($18,000) and Rwf30 million ($36,000) each.

Property developers blame the high cost of land and associated infrastructure for their lukewarm attitude to low-cost housing segment.

“Fixing the low-cost housing problem needs substantial intervention to entice investors who feel that this area is not profitable given the rising cost of land and uncertainty over recouping investment,” said a Kigali-based architect and urban planner, adding that lack of detailed data on the housing sector also turns away would-be investors in the sector.

Mr Sagashya argues that affordable financing options and provision of cheap loans are key to addressing the rising cost of housing and growing demand, but said proper financing and supply mechanisms can only be arrived at after a comprehensive study.

He added that the study-based data could be available as early as the end of this financial year, following a recent invitation to consultants to provide baseline market data with predictions of the future affordable housing market, demand and preferences.

It is projected that 35 per cent of Rwanda’s population will be living in urban centres by 2020 up from 17 per cent today.