Low-Income Access to Urban Land and Housing in Botswana

Like most developing countries, Botswana—a middle-income country—has experienced rapid urban growth, which has brought in its wake many social and economic problems. One of the key challenges has been the lack of access to land and housing for the poor who have moved into the urban centres in large numbers in search of employment and economic survival. Many programmes and strategies have been introduced by both central and local governments to address this problem. These include: squatter settlement upgrading; public housing through site, service and self-help housing; subsidised plot allocation; financial incentives for housing construction, etc. Many challenges have hampered the implementation of these strategies and programmes including fast urbanisation, which outstrips supply of land and housing for most urbanites; unaffordability of many of these schemes; poor targeting; high defaulting rates and poor management of these schemes. This paper calls upon the government, the private sector and local communities to devise holistic solutions to enable low-income households to procure decent accommodation in urban areas.