HOUSING REDUX

Aug 22 , 2020.

In a fairly packed Sheraton Addis last week, Eyob Tekalign (PhD), state minister for Finance, Demitu Hambisa, head of cabinet affairs and board chair of the Federal Housing Corporation, Aisha Mohammed, minister of Urban Development & Construction, and Abraham Belay (PhD), minister of Innovation & Technology, sat to witness the launch of a new housing project in Gerji, Addis Abeba.

Touting a new technology to construct houses and expected to invest at least three billion Birr over the next year and a half, officials of the Federal Housing Corporation characterised the project as proof of the agency’s revival.

“Over the past 28 years, the Corporation has fallen behind on its duty to provide housing,” lamented Reshad Kemal, the Corporation’s director-general, before going on to detail the fruits of the “reform” efforts over the past two years, including quadrupling its income to 1.2 billion Br.

Already constructing houses in eight different parts of the capital, the Corporation's new Gerji residential housing project will see 510 housing units built. They will lie on three hectares of land and will be located in 16 different 10-storey buildings. Making use of a more industrial construction method, new to Ethiopia but at least half a century old elsewhere, Korean, Indian and local firms will collaborate on the project.

Coming at about six million Birr a unit – with the smallest being a three-bedroom option - it will be one of the more expensive real estate properties in the city. Already, the Corporation owns property valued at 70 billion Br, according to its director-general.

“It is not the sort of project where the cost of the whole can just be divided by the number of units,” said Yonas Tadesse, managing director of Ovid Construction, a contractor working on the design-build project.

Raising the cost are indoor and outdoor amenities, including an amphitheatre and underground parking lot that will be able to accommodate 750 cars at a time.

PUBLISHED ON Aug 22,2020 [ VOL 21 , NO 1060]