A generation of Africans is being quietly evicted from dignity. About a week ago, in Nigeria, students at the University of Lagos protested the surge in hostel rents by 40% in a single year, with a four-person room now costing over ₦910,000.
In Ghana, young teachers and nurses are ordered to pay two years’ rent in advance, i.e., tens of thousands of cedis upfront before a landlord hands over a key.
Rent in Africa is no longer just a monthly obligation. For millions, it is a shackle, a weapon, and a slow violence eroding dignity. Families are paying not just for shelter but for survival itself—and the price keeps climbing.
Africa’s housing crisis is no longer a slow-burning problem — it has boiled over into a full-blown emergency. Millions of families are now being pushed into slums, informal settlements are mushrooming at alarming rates, and construction costs have surged so violently that even middle-class homeownership dreams have finally collapsed.
What do we call this, if not a humanitarian crisis?
Children Driven Out of Classrooms
The crisis is no longer hidden in slums anymore. It is breaking the backs of working families. Parents are uprooting children from schools because they can no longer afford to live nearby. In Lagos, rents have doubled in neighborhoods like Surulere and Yaba, pushing families into far-off suburbs in neighboring Ogun state.
A father wakes at 3 a.m. to walk for hours to his job, because transport now gulps nearly as much as food. Mothers beg landlords for mercy, only to be handed quit notices.
In Accra, landlords demand up to two years’ rent in advance in neighborhoods like Madina and Osu, pushing families into slum areas like Old Fadama or Sowutuom. In Liberia, a public servant earning an average of $2,280 USD annually is unable to rent a cheap new house that costs $1,300 USD a month, leaving them sleeping on relatives’ couches or in squalid slums.
And then there are the students, stranded between collapsed official hostels and predatory private promoters, forced to either crowd into overpriced cubicles or commute across unsafe distances. A nation that cannot house its students is a nation writing its own obituary.
Rent Is the Fever, Housing Deficit the Infection
These are not scattered tales of greedy landlords alone. They are symptoms of a massive system failure.
Nigeria’s housing deficit now stands at 28 million units. Homeownership lingers at 25%, one of the lowest rates in Africa. The State of Lagos Housing Market Report (2025) revealed that families in the city now spend 50–70% of their income on rent—more than double the global benchmark for affordability.
In a country where GDP per capita is barely $835, many households are paying more to landlords than they spend on food, healthcare, or education.
In Ghana, the shortfall exceeds 1.8 million homes. Ghana’s cities are so unaffordable now that over 60% of urban Ghanaians live in slums. The outdated Rent Act of 1963 says landlords cannot demand more than six months’ advance.
Yet, in Accra and Kumasi, tenants are routinely asked for 12 to 24 months upfront, locking professionals into what amounts to modern-day indenture. Families take loans, sell assets, or fall into debt traps just to secure a roof.
Liberia, fragile after years of conflict, faces an even more delicate reality: no structured mortgage system, weak rent regulation, and entire communities one shock away from homelessness.
If rents are swallowing incomes so brutally, it is not just because landlords are ruthless—it is because affordable housing has failed to exist at scale.
The Faces Behind the Numbers
Consider Fatima, a widowed private school teacher with an asthmatic teenage daughter in lekki, Lagos. Her one-room apartment rose from ₦400,000 to ₦700,000 annually (75% increase). Her landlord insists the rent reflects “Lagos’ growth,” and eviction looms if she can’t pay. Or Osakpolor, a bus driver in Benin city whose annual rent jumped from ₦350,000 to ₦600,000. As the sole caretaker for his ailing, elderly mother, he spends ₦20,000 a month on her medication alone. His children now face moving schools mid-term.
In Ghana’s Kisseman, a chamber-and-hall flat costs GHS 1,600 per month. Landlords demand two years’ advance: GHS 38,400 upfront—more than half the annual salary of a teacher. Where is a nurse or junior officer supposed to find such sums? Families are splitting apart, professionals are sinking into debt, and a generation of youth is locked out of urban life.
Let’s not prop up economics. It is about human dignity under siege.
Governments Are Failing, Markets Are Predatory
What makes this scandalous is not just the numbers
It is the silence of governance. Rent laws exist, but they are dead letters. In Ghana, the Rent Control Department sleeps while landlords flout the law with impunity. In Nigeria, tenancy laws are toothless without costly litigation. In Liberia, laws barely exist.
Meanwhile, landlords—many of them “old generation” inheritors—treat properties like cash machines, raising rents arbitrarily without renovations. Developers chase luxury towers priced in U.S. dollars, while the working and middle classes are abandoned to overcrowded flats or sprawling informal settlements. Policymakers oil their hands while ordinary families suffocate.
We shouldn’t just call this a market failure. It is a moral failure.
A Continental Emergency
In sub-Saharan Africa, 230 million people – roughly half of all urban residents – live in “slum” households lacking adequate sanitation or durable structures. The scale of the shortfall is staggering. The continent-wide housing deficit exceeds 56 million units – fast-growing Kenya needs about 200,000–250,000 new homes annually to keep up, but produces under 50,000 – only one-fifth of what’s required. Even Africa’s most industrialized nation, South Africa, faces a backlog of approx. 2.3 million houses, as urban migration continuously outpaces construction.
Liberia’s cities are so unaffordable that over 65% of urban Liberians live in slums, with the figure rising to over 70% in the capital, Monrovia. From sprawling Kinshasa (DRC), which grows by 1,000 people a day, to teeming Lagos, the story repeats: demand for housing is exploding, while supply remains grossly inadequate. The human cost of this crisis is measured in lives lived without dignity or security. “Without immediate investment in affordable housing, many will be forced into informal settlements, exacerbating social inequality,” a recent report warned.
Africa is sleepwalking into a housing catastrophe, and the hour is late.
The Way Forward
We cannot wait for slow government reforms or for global financiers to parachute in solutions. The cost of inaction is too high. What is needed now is a broad-based private sector coalition—developers, financiers, innovators, and civic stakeholders—committed to building affordable homes at scale.
Governments must update tenancy laws, enforce caps on arbitrary hikes, and provide incentives for affordable housing. But the private sector must step up: leveraging local materials, innovating rent-to-own models, pooling diaspora and pension funds, and breaking ground where governments have failed.
We need an African coalition that treats housing the way Singapore treated public housing, the way Germany treats rent control—with urgency, accountability, and innovation.
Because this is no longer a housing market story. It is the story of dignity, justice, and survival.
A Final Word
If Nigeria, Ghana or even Liberia cannot solve this, the rest of the continent will pay the price. The crisis is visible. The stories are on our front pages. The data is indisputable. Shelter is not a luxury. It is a right.
Jennifer Odii is the Founder of the Real Estate Stakeholders Support Initiative (RESSI), a regional nonprofit focused on real estate equity, access, and accountability.
