Museveni concerned over housing deficit, blames rapid urbanisation

KAMPALA - President Yoweri Museveni has expressed concern over the alarming housing deficit in the country, attributing it to rapid urbanisation.

He made the remarks during the Homes and Gardeners Expo 2025 at the Sheraton Kampala Hotel recently, in a speech read on his behalf by Judith Nabakooba, the Minister of Lands, Housing and Urban Development.

The level of urbanisation is increasing every day, and in Uganda, the urban population growth rate is 5.2% higher than the 2.7% national population growth rate.

Currently, Uganda faces a housing deficit of 2.5 million housing units.

The President noted that the shortfall is distributed across both rural and urban areas, with the acute need in urban areas due to rapid urbanisation of over five per cent per year.

“This is a pressing challenge, but also a market. Many of our citizens, especially the urban poor, lack decent and affordable housing,” he said, calling for a thriving, creative, and socially responsible construction industry.

The expo was organised under the theme: Access to quality living and a path to a green future.

The President commended organisers of the expo for taking the right path towards providing creative solutions that will offer the marginalised access to affordable and high-quality housing.

“I call upon all the international exhibitors to invest in Uganda and take advantage of the favourable investment climate in our country,” he said.

Highlighting several policies and regulations put in place to guide the construction sector, he noted that this is intended to create an atmosphere for the sector to flourish.

Among the policies and regulations are the National Housing Policy, which provides a framework for housing development, the National Urban Policy that manages the urbanisation policy, and Condominium Property Act that guides vertical housing development.

Others are the Physical Planning Act that declared the whole country a planning area, and the Landlord Tenant Act for a harmonious relationship between landlords and tenants, among others.

Lazarus Mugabi, a board member of AREA Uganda, said housing remains a big challenge, with a few individuals able to access and afford decent houses.

He stressed that for any house to be affordable, someone should be able to spend not more than 30% of their income.

“What is affordable to me may not be affordable to him because of differences in our income levels,” he said, calling upon the Government to put policies in place that are favourable for developers to design products that target first-time buyers.

He added that what determines the price of projects is the cost of infrastructure, suggesting that if the government can lend a hand in putting in place infrastructures such as roads, water and power lines, that would impact the cost of the project.

“Our role is to lobby the government so that when a project comes, they can go ahead and put in that infrastructure so that the developers can develop projects that are affordable and accessible.”