By Kingsley Adegboye

Tokunbo Omisore, President, Africa Union of Architects, AUA, has noted that real estate development in Nigeria and a few other African countries like Gabon, Zambia and other  is promising, adding that it has been seen by many investors from other parts of the world as emerging markets which will give good returns.

Pointing out that Africa looks promising in terms of real estate development, he, however, said that there is higher risk involved compared to Asia as many potential investors see Africa as rewarding with a high risk.

Omisore who made this disclosure in an interview with property journalists in Lagos at the weekend, noted thus: “They come in on a short term basis. Looking at Africa over the long term is scary to most investors, because you can’t predict what will happen to a country or the continent at large, in terms of going in and making what you will call quick money”.

The disadvantage of this, according to him, is that real estate does not become affordable to meet longer term loans or funding, stressing that most of the funds that are taken out of Africa to Europe and America are at zero percent return on their currency. “This means that investing in Africa is the best thing to pursue,” he stated.

Comparing Nigeria and other African markets, the AUA boss said regionally, South Africa has been classified as one of the emerging markets, adding that it is a more developed economy; but in terms of resources and population, Nigeria tends to have a better advantage.

He said: “Nigeria is so blessed that if we are sincere to ourselves and the governance is right, we should have no problem leading the continent; but that is not the case for what I will refer to as the teething problem which is affecting us as a country. We should realise that looking inwards is a lot better than going out of Nigeria or even going out of the continent. Then, we will rescue the continent from the economic slavery and capital flight which we are presently facing”.

On checking capital flight, he said as architects, what they have started campaigning for since he became President of the Africa Union of Architects in June 2011, is re-branding African architecture and architects. To do this, he noted that architects must have a cultural identity and they  must develop their vernacular architecture.

“How do we do this? We need to go back to our traditional architecture and enhance it with technology. As long as we don’t look at developing ‘made in Africa’ goods and we keep taking our funds out of the continent to buy goods or building materials made in Europe, you can make $100 billion a year yet it will not be for the economy. If you have to rely on the clothes, cars, medicals and everything from abroad, you make $100 billion and at the end of the year you owe up to $30 billion because of your exposure, you are classified a debtor.

On AUA competition, he said it was inspired by the need to alleviate poverty. He explained thus: “We need to be more relevant to our communities, to plan with the people and not for the people. We need to help our societies, and to help our societies as architects, we need to provide affordable humane shelters.

“Now, if every time we have to build, the architects or those in charge of actualisation of the concept feel that we must build a housing estate that looks like one in Rotterdam or New York, it means we will not use our local materials developed here which will help to provide job opportunities for the average persons.

“Every time we buy building materials from overseas, we pay custom duties and we always have middle men involved. By the time every housing unit is completed, it probably costs three times more than what it would have cost if local materials were utilised. Instead of achieving probably 5,000 houses, we end up achieving less than 1,000.

“Now, what does that do to our people? It doesn’t help because we over-price these buildings by looking beyond our shores. What stops us from developing our own traditional architecture? What most people want is a decent and affordable housing structure. If the development is affordable, sustainability becomes a problem”.

On the partnership with Nigerite on AUA competition, Omisore said Nigerite is a typical example of a made in Africa company that supports the continent by providing opportunities to its locality, which is Nigeria. According to him, if such a company is patronised both by the home country and in the sub-region, it will be empowered to open more factories, stressing that when such factories are opened, more job opportunities are created.

However, he noted that whatever such a company manufactures must be purchased because people must buy locally made materials first before they think of foreign goods. He said the more people buy from outside the continent, the more they make those countries richer to our own disadvantage, pointing out that apart from denying our citizens work, they equally deny them the opportunity to develop.

“If we had been developing our own traditional mud architecture, by now, maybe we would have had a solution for how to maintain mud architecture at a cost cheaper than cement, given the fact that it has good insulation properties. If we support your company and from our support you make excess profit in a year that means you can give something back to the society,” Omisore noted.