HOUSING DEVELOPMENT UNIT

Housing Cooperatives

THE HOUSING SITUATION IN TANZANIA 

The annual population growth in Tanzania between 1993-1999 is estimated to 2.7%, and of the total population, 32% lives in urban areas.  Between 2000 and 2015, the shelter delivery systems will need to meet the needs of an additional 1,990,857 households.

In Tanzania, 28% of the urban population lives on agriculture in open spaces in urban and peri-urban areas. Migration to urban areas is mainly due to economic hardship. An estimated 70% of urban dwellers live in shelters in informal and unplanned settlements. Most of these settlements lack even the most basic services such as clean water, sanitation, waste disposal systems, access roads, health and education services. The development of quality shelter delivery systems has been hindered by several factors, including poor economic growth, previous land policies that prevented a workable land market, and severely restricted access to credit for the construction and improvement of housing.

For individuals, the chance to improve their built environment is extremely small. Procedures for acquiring land are very long, cumbersome and bureaucratic and there is a lack of housing finance institutions.

Sustainable shelter requires that grassroots organizations play an active role in shelter delivery systems, as their members know which services are most useful to them.

One of the possibilities for low-income households to access affordable and adequate shelter is for them to get organized in groups whose members share the same aim in so far as improving their housing and living conditions through self-help initiatives.

In a democratic procedure, the people work together to access land, get technical assistance, save money, search for financial assistance, access public infrastructure and social services. They also plan community space and buildings and improvement of the environment.
 

HOUSING COOPERATIVES

Cooperatives in Tanzania

From Independence in 1961, Tanzania applied socialist principles, and while there were social gains, the country became one of the poorest countries in the world in conventional economic terms.  Tanzania was one of the first countries in the region to introduce housing cooperatives in the 1970s. The first initiative was a donor-driven joint initiative by the International Cooperative Housing Movement and the United Nations with the goal to develop the Government’s capacity to deliver shelter and to create a cooperative housing movement in Tanzania.

The second initiative was connected to the relocation of the national administrative capital from Dar es Salaam to Dodoma. This also had heavy Government involvement and donor support, principally from UNDP.

These initiatives created high expectations among the members of these first cooperatives and were followed by a rapid increase in the number of housing cooperatives in the early years of independence in Tanzania.
The Dodoma cooperatives were successful in obtaining plots, but had difficulties financing the construction of their houses, and most projects today are yet uncompleted.  After the introduction of economic reforms in the 1980s, the situation for cooperatives was less favorable and many cooperatives that had been registered stopped being active due to the very high expectations that had been created in the beginning.

Today, although Tanzania has had a housing cooperative sector, there has in fact never been a housing cooperative movement driven from the grassroots. At present, Tanzania’s housing cooperatives are weak and receive only very little support from local and national governments. Housing cooperatives account for only 2% of all registered cooperative societies. Only recently, very few NGOs have started again supporting shelter development through housing cooperatives or cooperative- like groups.
 

What kind of support does WAT provide?
 

For profiles of each housing coop, please click here

Currently, WAT is working with 5 housing coops/groups of 282 members, four in Dar Es Salaam and one in Dodoma. Three groups out of five have managed to register under Registrar of Cooperatives section 15 of 1991. The group in Dodoma has secured surveyed land. Four groups in Dar have purchased a piece of land and they are now looking forward to solicit funds for survey, social services and construction.

WAT provides the following services:

• Providing on-going technical assistance to housing coops/groups through workshops, seminars and meetings.
• Preparing house designs and types for the coops/groups . Click here for information on "The House that Grows"
• Providing skill training on alternative building materials and appropriate technology to the housing coops/groups. click here for the training
• Organizing exchange visits to project sites of cooperative housing societies.  Click here for information on "Exchange visit to project sites"
• Providing information through research and networking on affordable building materials and appropriate technology.
• Assisting the housing coops in writing project proposals
• Linking community  people with local authorities and government agencies.                          

• The procedure for acquiring land is very long, cumbersome and bureaucratic, the housing cooperatives have chosen to purchase land far from the city boundary.
• Inadequate planning, machinery by the government  to facilitate planning for low income housing programs/projects
• Member's incomes are small and irregular and therefore they can not save enough and plan for the long term
• Lack of housing finance institutions (e.g. Tanzania Housing Bank)

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