Why are there so many unfinished buildings in Africa?
L IKE AN ENORMOUS grey skeleton, a six-storey apartment building looms over a quiet street in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. Concrete balconies and bedrooms are discernible. But there are no windows, doors or lights. And the only painting is of the scatological variety from the sole residents: crows. How long has it been like that? “Five or six years,” says the guard. Property in Senegal has been booming, but concrete is frequently poured into buildings only for construction suddenly to stop, often for many years.
Half-made buildings are everywhere in African cities. In Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, the government last year said it would take over 600 of them because they had been unfinished for so long. Dakar’s skeletal structures illustrate many of the reasons why unfinished buildings are so common—and the costs of this problem.
Putting up walls is not cheap. The concrete and materials for a five-storey apartment building cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Senegal is desperately short of finance. Around 40% of firms say access to cash is their biggest obstacle, compared with 14% in the rest of the world. Across sub-Saharan Africa it is businesses’ largest problem (see chart). Savings are low and bank lending is limited. Yet money is still poured into buildings which earn nothing for years. Whatever the pop star Pharrell Williams says, few prospective tenants feel like a room without a roof.
