By Modupe Gbadeyanka
Founder and CEO of Nedcomoaks Limited, Mr Kennedy Okonkwo, has told Forbes Africa how the housing gap in Nigeria can be narrowed.
The top player in affordable real estate in Nigeria was featured on the November edition of Forbes Africa, where he revealed that long term partnerships between private and public sector was key to improving housing gap in Nigeria.
According to him, government and private players must understand the needs and earnings of the people to be able to service the area of living in our society.
He revealed to Forbes Africa that public-private partnerships can ease Nigeria’s housing crisis, stressing that, “Financing infrastructure deficit across Africa will involve collective innovation both across the public and the private sectors.”
He further stated that creating affordable housing in the developing world requires truly understanding how people in those communities live, saying that a careful understanding of that fact would help in determining how fast we can meet the demands of fast-growing African cities.
The Forbes cover, in an interview with Mr Okonkwo, also revealed an in-depth survey on the key challenges to creating affordable housing in Africa’s growing cities and the need for efficient housing solutions with the role of the government in driving public private partnership.
Nedcomoaks Limited, a real estate company engaged in the acquisition, development and management of properties in Nigeria, has quickly become a top player in the country’s residential real estate sector which provides employment to thousands of people and annual revenues of over N15 billion in just under a decade.
Mr Okonkwo has also built a strong reputation as a passionate advocate of the power of the real estate sector in Nigeria to contribute to the socio-economic well-being of the country, by providing low-income housing solutions to Nigerians.
Adedapo Adesanya