Real Estate expert advocates increased investment in construction sector

Akinkubge-Filani made the call in a virtual interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.

NAN reports that Mixta Africa is the leading African real estate and infrastructure development company.

Mixta Africa specialises in the execution of medium to large-scale and commercial real estate development projects in Africa, while also providing real estate advisory services.

According to Akinkubge-Filani, the construction value chain is a money-spinner globally, hence, the need for Nigeria to harness the enormous opportunities to grow the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

“The housing sector and the real estate sector is a major contributors to GDP in Nigeria. I think if you look at the last quarter, it came top five per cent of contributors to Nigeria’s GDP.

“But over and above that, the building and construction value chain is the astronomical driver of jobs growth in the Nigerian economy,’’ she said.

She explained that the company’s passion to bring in diaspora remittances through real estates investments back home in Nigeria led to its current investment platform for citizens abroad.

She said that the firm was also exploring the use of local building materials, thereby growing the local economy while creating jobs.

Speaking on Mixta Africa’s roadshow in London for diaspora investments, she said several Nigerians abroad want to own properties back home and need a safe investment corridor.

According to her, that is the gap the firm is filling.

Akinkugbe-Filani said that the roadshow started in 2021 and that the 2022 edition was on to evolve a user-friendly real estate investment platform for Nigerians in the diaspora.

“Our thinking was that there is a large untapped audience and we need to find a way to connect with them to bring the opportunities to them in the diaspora,’’ she said.

She said Nigerians abroad were used to low competitive interest rates on mortgages, hence the firm’s keying into the Federal Government’s seven per cent long term financing opportunities to expand homeownership.

The Mixta Africa’s Chief Financial Officer said the shelter gap in Nigeria and Africa was huge and necessitated the need for deliberate sustained policies by both governments and the private sector to close the gap.

She also said that finding credible lenders was a challenge in Nigeria as such, the firm was tapping into funding from development finance institutions to make housing affordable and accessible.

She listed various housing schemes completed and sold out through the National Housing Fund (NHF) due to partnership with the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria and other primary mortgage institutions.

She said that the opportunities were available to civil servants and other contributors to the NHF to pay at low-interest rates in the long term.

She commended the FMBN for subsidising homeownership while calling for increased collaboration with the private sector to increase housing stock to bridge the shelter gap.

“We need more of those schemes where the government and development institutions can underwrite the risk to a certain extent and bring down the cost of borrowing to consumers.

“But if you think about it from a developer’s perspective, this has been a major game-changer for us because we are a developer of skill, we are not just building one house here, two houses there.

“We have delivered over 40,000 units since we have been in this but in Nigeria 4,000. The only way we can scale up housing is to ensure that it is a full acquisition,’’ she said.

She said Mixta Africa is well established and focuses on the public as well as private sector partnership adding that “Africa infrastructure gap is like a 100 billion Dollars in financing’’.

According to her,  private sector involvement is needed to build infrastructure to make housing accessible.

“A home is only affordable in so far as a consumer has been able to afford the cost of the home but also, that consumers need to be able to access transport infrastructure, road infrastructure that is not so expensive,’’ she said.

She expressed the willingness of Mixta Africa to collaborate with Nigerians and global stakeholders to close the shelter gap which was increasing yearly.