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Why are there so many unfinished buildings in Africa?
- gpvos 6y agoA few years ago I read an article that argued that one of the best ways to help many African countries would be to send accountants and help set up a cadastre.
- true_religion 6y agoIt’s been tried but the political opposition is massive for various reasons.
- crakenzak 6y agoI find this very interesting, why do you think there’s opposition to it? So property owners don’t get taxed on the real value of their assets?
- paganel 6y ago> why do you think there’s opposition to it? There's still lots of small property owners that are still poor that would prefer not paying taxes on their small holdings.
- pjc50 6y agoNot everywhere has US style property taxes. More likely the problem relates to ownership and title: quite likely a lot of property will technically be squatting. The book "The Other Path" by Hernando de Soto goes into this; the best solution is to award title to long term occupiers.
- true_religion 6y agoFor instance in Ghana, most land is leasehold not freehold due to the fact that land historically belonged to a family group or community rather than a person. Thus central government schemes to tax land have two arguments against them. First is that no one knows who will be taxed, and since who is taxed is synonymous with who owns the property that’s an added problem as people believe they are being unfairly deprived of their birth rights. Secondly, taxing property which is leasehold is problematic as the people making use of the land aren’t the owners. The owners have generally already spent the leasehold advance, and in the case of 99 year leases are likely already dead. So, the only people you can collect from are the tenants which leads you right back into problem 1. In practice though, people pay property tax on assessed value of buildings, but it’s not the same as land tax so an unfinished building can be counted as worthless depending on its state.
- justcurious33 6y agoAs opposed to vaccinating them, building infrastructure for them, defending them from Jihadis in the Sahel, etc. I’m honestly completely indifferent to colonialism (I’m neither for or against); I just don’t like hypocrisy. If you want to do it, do it, but please call it what it is.
- redis_mlc 6y ago> building infrastructure for them That's what they're discussing, SJW.
- staticautomatic 6y agoIn case anyone else doesn’t know the word cadastre: > a register of property showing the extent, value, and ownership of land for taxation.
- edoceo 6y agoEngland called theirs Domesday (Doomsday) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesday_Book https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesday_Book
- simonh 6y agoNowadays it’s the Land Registry. It would be pretty cool if we did call it the Domesday Book, but alas..
- mattmanser 6y agoOur land registry is really dodgy and enables corruption though, and not one to emulate.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoAnd if that is set up properly, you can combine it with o make some great interactive visulalizations like https://3dbag.nl/en/viewer https://3dbag.nl/en/viewer
- kqr 6y agoThis article, coupled with the ideas in Lombard Street, makes it sound like the lack of deposit banking is another big problem. Unfortunately, if it's cultural (you owe your relatives any spare liquid capital you have) then I don't know how to fix it.
- blaser-waffle 6y agoMuch of Africa's banking infrastructure is handled by cell phones.
- eraserj 6y agoGhana and DRC are trying to set up a cadastre using blockchain, let's see how it goes.
- throwaway210222 6y agoMany a Zimbabwean will tell you that none of this matters if the local police refuse to arrest people (violently) contesting your ownership. In fact, the police (and local politicians) are often present to contribute to the threat.
- yhoiseth 6y agoGreat podcast episode/book chapter by Tim Harford on the value of a property register (9 minutes): https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csv3gt https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csv3gt
- febeling 6y agoThat sounds like the conclusion from the book The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, by Hernando de Soto (2000). In his research he found that the legal system around property was very ineffective for poor people and many developing countries. They followed real life cases trying to bring properties/businesses from the informal sector to being fully registered and taxed. It was often a many year process and expensive. Owners would also have preferred to pay taxed when getting access to fully legal status, access to banking and capital markets an important one. Findings where from places like Peru, Egypt, Philippines (if memory serves me), and contrasted with places like US, Germany, England, Sweden, and Japan. The latter mostly had a well structured, democratic system of property law and registries available to everyone, not just the wealthy or powerful. Edit: Another key element was to open a process to convert squatted land into legal property. Many times formal land ownership was not conforming to lived reality, and some legal title nobody was interested in any longer was blocking legalization of actual use. US homesteading regulations are one example of how that was done, but all western countries mentioned earlier have or had equivalent processes.
- quantum_solanum 6y ago> Another key element was to open a process to convert squatted land into legal property. Many times formal land ownership was not conforming to lived reality, and some legal title nobody was interested in any longer was blocking legalization of actual use. the process: https://allthatsinteresting.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/manifest-destiny-og.jpg https://allthatsinteresting.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads...
- gpvos 6y agoIt was probably this one (Dutch): https://decorrespondent.nl/4060/wat-is-oersaai-en-gaat-de-wereld-redden-hint-wij-hebben-er-een-hekel-aan/176898260-3568e571 https://decorrespondent.nl/4060/wat-is-oersaai-en-gaat-de-we... It actually argued for lots more bureaucracy, not accountants particularly. And for a cadastre / land registry. And indeed mentions Hernando de Soto's work in Peru and Egypt.
- globular-toast 6y agoLike they have in South Africa? That's going well...
- mikro2nd 6y agoNot sure what you're referring to, since South Africa has had a well-ordered and fully functional cadastre for well over a century (to my knowledge, probably quite a lot longer).
- globular-toast 6y agoYeah, it's also had money for at least that long too. I was referring to it having one of the highest crime rates in the world and the highest inequality coefficient by a considerable margin.
- ArnoVW 6y agoThis was a theory of Hernando De Soto in the 90's. He produced quite a bit of research / statistics on the subject, doing surveys over 100 countries. If you want to read about him, there is this article [1] I remember watching a documentary where they reproduced his experiment. Essentially, send a team of students in each country on a mission : create a company. I've done it in the UK, it's one day and 70 pounds. In the documentary they showed the complexities for just the administrative act of "creating a company" in (I believe) Argentina. It took them 3 months. [1] https://www.investors.com/news/management/leaders-and-success/hernando-de-soto-revolutionized-world-thinking-poverty/ https://www.investors.com/news/management/leaders-and-succes...
- rootsudo 6y agoSame in asia too - out of money, poor financial forecast and no allocation of funds/resources to build.
- rudyfink 6y agoI have no idea if it is true, but, in Egypt, my guide (who I will say was wonderfully knowledgeable on historic matters), stated that the reason many properties had rebar extending upwards (e.g., it looked like there were more stories to be added) was related to tax policy. I forget the full detail of her explanation, but there was some different kind of tax treatment if the building was "finished," so there were a number of approaches to not "finish" a building. Edit: From some subsequent Googling, it appears this tax explanation was, at least, historically true in Egypt. There are reports that this policy may have changed in the early 2010's.
- neaanopri 6y agoI've seen and heard of this in Mexico and Latin America as well. A lot of US housing styles, such as saltbox and narrow townhouses, are also attempts to game older versions of the tax code
- Gibbon1 6y agoYears ago I read the same about places in the US as well. And of assessors being really intrusive. People being butthurt because they feel they are being punished for keeping their house up. I've heard California used to base assessments on comparative values so that people don't try and game the system with crummy substandard construction and materials.
- bluecalm 6y agoWell it's natural that people feel it's unfair to tax them more just because they make their house nicer. It's just a very unfair tax. Think about it. You spend money and work a lot of hours to refurbish your kitchen and then you're informed you have to pay more because of it. I am surprised people don't rebel against this policy.
- loonster 6y agoAnother reason to avoid getting permits for remodels.
- burlesona 6y agoArchive link: https://archive.md/QmkvE https://archive.md/QmkvE
- 55555 6y ago> the only painting is of the scatological variety from the sole residents: crows. This was weird.
- nanna 6y agoCrow poo?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y agoGreece in the early 2000s had very many unfinished buildings as well, saw those as a tourist. I've been wondering ever since what the Greek reason for that was - any ideas?
- cigaser 6y agoUnfinished buildings have no taxes. And if building company has free capacity, it makes sense to use it. There is no freeze in winter so concrete skeleton lasts for decades.
- jansan 6y agoYou didn't have to pay taxes on unfinshied buildings. Also, I heard that there was a swimming pool tax in Greece. But there was no tax on emergency water reservoirs, if you know what I mean :)
- personlurking 6y agoIf it's similar to the Sicilian version, there are many articles on the "unfinished Sicily". Here's one from NYT: https://archive.is/ht0mF https://archive.is/ht0mF But one reason, I've read, is the mafia. They have evolved into financial organizations in recent decades, and often bid on and obtain public funds to start new building projects, build out the bare minimum then keep the rest for themselves, iirc.
- Causality1 6y agoI've heard quite extraordinary stories related to the "grabby kin" problem. Entirely hearsay, but at the same time too common. Most of them keep to a similar theme, that is a combination of entitlement to resources held by your relatives and a lack of emphasis on long-term gains. Probably half of these stories involve someone just getting a small business off the ground and losing it because relatives think they're entitled to anything you own. The food stocks for their vendor cart are eaten by a relative, building supplies are taken to repair a relative's house, seed stock is raided to feed a relative's animals.
- eucryphia 6y agoBasically UBI...
- gpvos 6y agoNo, nearly the opposite. Look up the meaning of the word "universal".
- Mediterraneo10 6y agoIndeed, this is the theme of Ousmane Sembène’s film Mandabi that recently got a nice release from Criterion: a Senegalese man gets sent some money from a relative working in France, but his family, neighbors, and local officials all demand a slice of it, and ultimately he not only loses the money order, he loses everything.
- veddox 6y agoHaving lived in southern Africa for 14 years, I can confirm that this is tragically common. One big problem is that modern capitalism is intensely individualistic, as is Western culture in general. African culture, on the other hand, is completely community-focussed. The individual does not exist apart from the community (family/village), therefore there is no concept of "private property". This makes for a lot of frustration in intercultural interactions between Westerners and Africans. It's also the reason why almost all successful local development projects target the entire community, not individuals. (This is not to judge one culture or the other! Just to point out that an economic system developed in one culture cannot be expected to work without problems in a very different culture.)
- herodoturtle 6y ago> What is going on? Start with the lack of finance. Many Senegalese developers struggle to obtain loans without hefty collateral. Instead, some start building, hoping to tempt buyers to put down deposits on flats and then use that to help finance the rest of the building. But buyers are wary of making a commitment based on a construction site. These unfinished projects often tie up prime land, too. > For Senegalese hoping to build their own homes, mortgages are rare. In all they cover only about 20% of the need. Across many African countries even the cheapest newly built house is unaffordable for most people. Instead, people break ground knowing they do not yet have the funds to finish. When they earn a little more money they add more bricks. I think it's worth noting these two paragraphs above because, whilst the topic refers to "unfinished buildings" (which, depending on your local English dialect, typically evokes a sense of large buildings being constructed), the same financing hurdles apply to far smaller "buildings" across Africa - such as single room homes and other types of small dwellings. > The shortage of finance makes a vicious circle. Many Africans, in effect, save in concrete. Thus money gets tied up for years in unfinished buildings earning nothing, rather than being put into a business or bank where it could earn a return which could allow would-be homeowners to build more rapidly later. The lack of liquidity in the financial system then further limits what banks can lend to builders. A vicious circle indeed. To the more economically astute among us, how would a country go about solving this problem? Any historical analogies would be appreciated.
- hadlock 6y ago> Instead, people break ground knowing they do not yet have the funds to finish. This is pretty common actually. You build one room, make it livable, and then build the next room, then the next, and when you run out of land, start on the second story. The end result is that a young family with children can own their own home, and live within their means immediately, rather than spend a decade renting and saving towards a down payment. You can see this over and over in the favellas of South America, and even on the outskirts of major cities in Vietnam like Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City ("Saigon"). Modern/western building codes do not allow for this kind of piecemeal construction, which is probably why it seems so odd to us.
- 6y ago
- hnbad 6y agoWhen I talked to someone running a "work & travel" agency in Europe that was mostly frequented by young people looking to do "something meaningful" in poorer countries he mentioned that an open secret was that frequently these kids would end up helping "construct" buildings only for those to be torn down again afterwards because they weren't up to spec and local craftspeople would then rebuild them properly on their own.
- bellyfullofbac 6y agoSounds like an urban legend. If the local people want the building, why not guide the helpers so they have a proper building from the start, rather than waste their own time building something shoddy, tearing it down, and building it again? My Western viewpoint also thinks there isn't much "spec" that poorer countries follow, maybe just: if it looks like it won't collapse, it's good enough, and hopefully young people also can judge whether a building looks like it's going to collapse or not.
- tmhrtly 6y agoThat is a fairly rudimentary viewpoint. People who've put up tens or hundreds of buildings in their lifetime are clearly going to be substantially more experienced and talented at doing that process than you, I or any random teenager. There's so much more work to creating a functioning abode than just evaluating 'will it collapse'. Would you trust a random youth to put up your house?
- bellyfullofbac 6y agoBut the random teenagers (my guess is it'd be more like twenty-somethings) would have the locals' guidance and supervision, surely? And it would be a lot more efficient for the locals to use the manpower properly (with supervision) rather than letting them "play" and then having to tear down what they built. At the worst case, the helpers could just be made to carry bricks and wooden planks from 1 spot to the other, and they'd still feel that they contributed.
- bluGill 6y ago
- patrickk 6y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20210501080448/https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2021/05/01/why-are-there-so-many-unfinished-buildings-in-africa https://web.archive.org/web/20210501080448/https://www.econo...
- aswegs8 6y agodoesn't work for me
- patrickk 6y agoHammer Esc before it fully loads.
- chrisxcross 6y agohttps://archive.is/BCIzr https://archive.is/BCIzr
- Raed667 6y agoOne common story I've seen repeatedly in Tunisia, involves poor planning and cost forecasting. Basically, a lot of people think that once the walls and roof are set they'd be 90% done. In reality, the "finishing" phase can cost the same as the "base" costs (Or more depending on what quality-standard you're aiming for).
- francisofascii 6y agoSounds similar to an typical software project.
- ilaksh 6y agoMy landlord here in a wealthy area of Mexico is supposedly extremely well-off (and the main house looks somewhat mansion-like from the street), yet the back part of the house that you can't see from the street is halfway finished. Hopefully he is going to wait until my lease is up before he really picks up the construction again. I think that's what he said. Taxes might have something to do with it. But also Mexico is so poor, I think there are just a lot of cases where people just don't have the money to finish a project right away or even tear down an old building. So it's just almost normal to see derelict of half-finished buildings in certain areas. My theory is that it therefore becomes sort of customary and acceptable to leave things like that and so it is more common. Even in cases where people could afford to finish more quickly.
- LatteLazy 6y agoThere are so many cultural and social norms that make business in the west easier and faster and more reliable. And they're basically invisible until you work somewhere else and have yo get something done.
- freddealmeida 6y agoThere are so many reasons. I think no matter what is said we will walk into arguments that will make us all racists. I'd rather say, because that is what they want.
- baybal2 6y ago> The lack of liquidity in the financial system then further limits what banks can lend to builders. The massive credit expansion is exactly what you don't want if you want to ease the housing market. The Economist got almost everything in this story wrong. I have personal experience of being to Nigeria a few times on infrastructure subcontract projects. The predominant portion of those abandoned construction sites are made by plain fraudsters, take money, make a semblance of construction going, then vanish with money. Urban apartment housing in most of Africa is seen as something for a more affluent, and well off, much alike how it is in Asia, and not the other way around as it is in the West. There are quite proficient builders in economically relatively well doing African countries. Take a look on http://www.mhfproperties.com/ http://www.mhfproperties.com/ Where fraud proliferates are 2nd tier African economies, and housing for people lower on the class ladder (ones who are just entering the middle class, and still want save hard on housing.) The shortages of cement, steel, and construction supplies bear much more on the availability of housing than any of that "liquidity" thing. Africa needs more factories, more mills, more kilns, more technical know how. At the moment even such basic things like petrol, and cement are largely import only even in most developed African economies. This leads to those countries squandering their short FX resources gained largely from agricultural exports, which could've been spent in import of something more useful, and productive, like plant machinery.
- Accujack 6y ago>Africa needs more factories, more mills, more kilns, more technical know how. Also less exploitation by industrialized nations and more leaders who want to improve their country's infrastructure rather than just get into a position of power so they can be a rich king. Western nations will invest in Africa if it gets them something... minerals, oil, other resources. They don't invest in Africa's people, they invest in the infrastructure they need to exploit those resources. Most of the money leaves the country, the part that stays usually gets greatly reduced by ending up in the pockets of political leaders because that's the way it's always been done.
- zappo2938 6y ago> exploitation by industrialized nations We hear a lot about how China invests billions in Africa building highways and such in order to have influence. I have a conspiracy theory based on stories I heard. It would be nice to know if is true or not. What Americans don't realize is that the Gambino crime family didn't just dissolve, they went to Africa, and they bought rights to natural resources such as coal. They have since the early 2000s become the brokers between natural resources in Africa and 3rd party buyers around the world and their business is violence.
- heldrida 6y agoOne is that I know about, is that some people start building the foundations and keep adding/building up, as they get more funds. *I didn't read the article, so maybe already mentioned
- gricardo99 6y agoPortugal has the same thing although I've found there are many more dilapidated ruins/condemned buildings, even right in the center of major cities. Just walk around Porto or Lisbon (you could use google street view), and it won't take long before you see a boarded-up or completely ruined lot/building in the middle of the city. Sometimes these places seem like prime real estate, or you can tell they were incredible properties in their prime. My relatives told me it was because there's no property tax, so there's no cost to letting a property sit idle. Also they described how families will pass down property between generations, often the younger generation moves away, only owning a fraction of the property as it is split between siblings, and then split again between cousins, etc..., until it's left without care takers with a vested interest or willingness to spend on maintenance and improvements. I'm not sure if that's the case, but it seemed like a plausible explanation. You'd think after decades of neglected properties the government would try to change incentives to deal with this. But of course property-related legal/tax changes can be very difficult to pass.
- asdff 6y agoIt's true in the U.S. as well. There are abandoned buildings all over Los Angeles that are just sitting rotting. Here is one that has been abandoned for years, is burned out, and even sits directly adjacent to a subway station. https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0767918,-118.2916802,3a,75y,281.56h,99.44t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sCQVHcSbzmuM76MlkMtUO7w!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DCQVHcSbzmuM76MlkMtUO7w%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D335.4612%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0767918,-118.2916802,3a,75y,...
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