Zimbabwe builders lobby government for dedicated mortgage bank to fund housing
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Zimbabwe Building Contractors Association president Tinashe Manzungu told the association's annual conference in Masvingo that the absence of a specialised mortgage lender is the biggest single obstacle to housing delivery, and urged a dedicated institution offering 15- to 25-year credit.
Zimbabwe's construction industry has asked the government to establish a dedicated mortgage bank, arguing that the absence of a specialised housing finance institution has become the single biggest obstacle to housing delivery, job creation and growth in the sector. Zimbabwe Building Contractors Association president Tinashe Manzungu made the call on the sidelines of the association's annual conference, held from November 4 to 7 at the Great Zimbabwe Hotel in Masvingo under a theme focused on regulatory reform, digital transformation and smart construction.
Manzungu said developers and home seekers currently rely on direct instalment sales stretching over five to ten years to pay for stands and houses because mortgage finance is not widely accessible, a model he described as slow, risky and exclusionary for young people, civil servants and informal traders who cannot pay cash upfront. \"We are not just lacking financing, we are lacking a system to deliver,\" he said, arguing that unlocking the sector's projected contribution of 12 to 15 percent of gross domestic product requires an immediate structural overhaul of national housing finance.
He put the scale of the financing gap at about US$16.5 billion of infrastructure investment needed between 2026 and 2030 across transport, roads, water and sanitation, energy, ICT, industrial parks, housing developments and smart cities, and said that ambition could not be met without long-term finance. His proposal is an institution that injects construction capital into development projects while extending long-term credit to buyers over 15 to 25 years instead of five, and he pointed to the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria and its National Housing Fund, the Nigeria Mortgage Refinance Company and the Kenya Mortgage Refinance Company, established in 2018, as precedents for refinancing banks and savings and credit cooperatives.
Manzungu said such a lender would accelerate delivery towards Zimbabwe's ambition of one million housing units by 2030, create work for builders, engineers, plumbers, electricians and suppliers, lift demand for local building materials and give young contractors access to finance rather than locking them out with high interest rates and short loan terms. The conference also saw the unveiling of a Young Contractors' Desk, a platform for emerging builders.
Responding to the call, the Minister of National Housing and Social Amenities, Professor Paul Mavima, said government alone could not solve the housing crisis and that the state would use land, incentives and policy to pull private capital into the sector. Under the National Development Strategy 2 the government has set a headline target of one million housing units over the five-year planning period, a rate of roughly 200,000 a year, and Mavima said the ministry was working on a package of incentives for financial institutions aimed at encouraging longer-tenure mortgages at better interest rates.