Tanzania in short of three million houses, says deputy minister

Dar es Salaam. Tanzania experiences a shortage of three million houses, which contributes to the rising cost of construction and rent in the country.

This was said on Monday October 2 by Deputy Minister of Lands, Housing and Human Settlements Development, Dr Angelina Mabula, on the occasion of marking World Habitat Day.

She said housing was still a challenge facing the majority of Tanzanians in the country.

According to her, 200,000 affordable houses are needed to be built across the country, as part of efforts to address the shortage.

"The deficit is very high. There are 10 institutions involved in the construction of affordable houses in the country, but until now they have not even built 10,000 houses and demand per year is 200,000 houses," she said.

Ms Mabula noted that due to that, rent houses and construction continued being high because of high demand.

Statistics shows that the number of people migrating to urban areas increased from 2.2 million in 1978 to 13.3 million in 2012.

According to her, the government will soon start collecting views from stakeholders on the drafting of a new policy of affordable rents and called for public participation.

She said this year theme had focused on policies and affordable prices, which were a challenge to the ministry to speed up the process of drafting the policy.

For his part, Mr Hilary Mdaki from Mwenge Cooperative Society called on the government to form housing cooperatives that would help build affordable houses for its members.

He also called on the government to speed up the drafting of the affordable housing policy.