With a growing population and a lack of housing to meet the demand, Accra’s rental market is not a level playing field. Credit: Selorm Kwame Attikpo/IPS

By Billie McTernan
ACCRA, Dec 4 2013 (IPS)

Across Accra, Ghana’s capital city, adverts for letting property can be found all over. But for as many placards there are, you will get just as many verbal warnings from locals cautioning people to beware of swindling agents.

With a growing population and a lack of housing to meet the demand, Accra’s rental market is not a level playing field. The majority of renters struggle to keep up with the pace as they try to scrape together hundreds of dollars in rent to secure a roof over their heads.

Elvina Quaison is a marketing manager who came to this West African nation from London in 2011 hoping to start her own business. Aged 32 at the time, Quaison knew she did not want to live with family but had not anticipated just how expensive living in Accra could be.

She stayed with a friend when she first arrived and began her search after a couple of months.

“Very quickly my budget went from 200 dollars per month to 400,” Quaison tells IPS.

The daily minimum wage in Ghana is 2.50 dollars – roughly 87 dollars per month – and the average Ghanaian salary is around 400 dollars per month.

Nana Osei, a 25-year-old recent graduate, currently lives with his aunt and is looking for a place of his own.

“Rents are too high, I can only afford 150 cedis [about 75 dollars] per month,” he tells IPS.

Rental rates for a two-bedroom apartment or self-compound house close to the centre of the city can start at 200 dollars and reach as high as 2,000 dollars in more upmarket areas. Such properties are usually reserved for expat workers whose rent is paid for by their companies.

The minority leader in parliament from the New Patriotic Party, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, tells IPS: “Families in regular employment can get [rent] advances from their work places. And they survive on shoestring budgets … it’s at the [expense] of providing good schooling for their kids and providing square meals for the family.”

According to the Ghana Statistical Service, the official population in greater Accra has grown from 2.9 million in 2000 to four million in 2010, as a result of people flocking to the capital in search of better work prospects. However, the actual number of people living in the city is thought to be at least eight million.

The country has a housing deficit of approximately 1.5 to 1.7 million units. And in a city with a lack of decent accommodation available for rent, it is a homeowners market.

And accommodation is becoming more difficult for ordinary people to afford. With a rapidly growing economy – GDP growth was 15 percent in 2011 – prices are increasing at a quicker rate than wages and salaries.

In July, fuel subsidies were removed and in October there was an increase in utility prices with electricity going up by 78.9 percent and water by 52 percent. November saw a 2.5 percent increase in value added tax to 15 percent.

“Every year we are only able to deliver to the market about 40,000 [housing units],” Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu says. “Per year we require about 110,000, which is about 30 percent of housing needs. So there is always a deficit of about 60,000 to 70,000 per year.”

“Given that situation, demand certainly outstrips supply. In the basic law of economics wherever demand outstrips supply, the price of the commodity will shoot up,” adds Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, who is also an urban planner.

“It is not as if anyone wants it that way, but it is the reality of the times.”

In 1963 a rent control act was first passed to protect tenants from unfair evictions and high rents. In July, members of parliament called on the assembly to amend the act in accordance with the current housing climate.

The move came after Salifu Ameen, MP for Wa East District in Upper West region, urged the government to initiate the national housing policy that aims to address the deficit and provide a range of housing units across the country as well as regulate prices. It has been in draft for seven years.

“For those in the middle, the new professional class, it makes your position more uncomfortable because yes now you’ve got that new white collar job and that car with air conditioning, but you can’t afford to live less than 35 to 40 minutes from your work,” Quaison points out. “You’re going to have to move further out because your rent and your living costs won’t equate to your salary.”

Practically unregulated, rents are left to the proprietor to set accordingly. It is common for renters to have to cough up one to two years’ rent in advance. “It has become a convention,” Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu says.

According to Johnet Darpoh – whose family owns lower-cost units on the outskirts of Accra that they have been renting out for 30 to 40 years – landlords in any given area form an association and decide amongst themselves at what price to set their rents. Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu also notes that rental agents gauge how prices are faring in a given area and set rent accordingly, including their commission fee in the final price.

In the meantime Quaison’s search for a property continues, only this time with a larger budget, as she has experienced how quickly expenses can accumulate. The country’s irregular water flow means that one has to buy a back-up water tank and – if they can afford it – a generator for times of electricity load-shedding.

“Suddenly a gated community [that comes with a service charge] sounded really appealing,” Quaison says.

But those that cannot afford to pay such high rents are left at a loss.

“There are some people who can’t rent a place of their own. Some are staying with friends or in a family house with a lot of people in one room,” Darpoh tells IPS.

“[There are places] where people are sleeping outside, with their kids on the floor. If the government could help them it would be better.”

Until then, the city’s more modest and lower-income earners will lose out when it comes to finding decent housing.

“People with very low incomes mostly stay in either uncompleted buildings,” Osei says. “Or in a building that lacks water, electricity or a toilet.”

Entrepreneur Edward Tagoe is co-founder of the software company, Nandimobile. However, research shows that of the 250,000 young people who enter Ghana’s job market annually, only two percent find employment in the formal sector. Credit: Billie McTernan/IPS

By Billie McTernan
ACCRA, Sep 19 2013 (IPS)

Ghana’s economy registered 7.1 percent growth last year but 23-year-old Jennifer Esi Avemee has had difficulty securing a permanent job since graduating in 2011. “It’s very stressful,” she laments. “It’s very hard to sustain yourself.”

Avemee studied public relations at the Ghanaian Institute of Journalism and had hoped to secure a job in the field after completing her national service at the Ghanaian Tourism Board in 2012. In previous years it was not uncommon for graduates to be kept on at the institution where they did their service.

However, in 2008 the International Monetary Fund advised the Ghanaian government to put a freeze on public sector recruitment – except in the areas of health and education – to curb the public sector wage bill, putting a strain on school-leavers and graduates looking for work. The freeze lasted two years and ended in 2011.

Avemee tells IPS that the situation has become so dire that some of her counterparts have taken to prostitution and “sakawa”, internet fraud.

Data and statistics on employment in Ghana is sparse.

In 2012 then minister of employment and social welfare Moses Asaga admitted that the government had no up-to-date or reliable data on the labour market.

Information available from the Institute of Statistical, Social, and Economic Research (ISSER) at the University of Ghana in Legon suggests that approximately 250,000 young people enter the job market annually of which two percent, or about 5,000, find employment in the formal sector.

According to research being carried out by the ISSER, 23 percent of youth aged between 15 and 24 and 28.8 percent of graduates between the ages of 25 and 35 wait two years or more before they are employed.

Dr William Baah-Boateng, one of the researchers of the ISSER study, says that over the last 20 years Ghana’s growth has averaged 5.1 percent, and this has not been reflected in an increase in employment.

According to the African Development Bank, this West African nation registered 7.1 percent growth in 2012, thanks to revenue from oil production, the services sector and export of gold and cocoa. This was a drop from the 14.4 percent growth registered in 2011, which was attributed to the start-up of oil production here.

A further report by the International Labour Organisation says that the public sector accounts for six percent of employment in Ghana, and that of the informal private sector stands at 86 percent.

“You can’t manage what you can’t control,” 30-year-old Edward Tagoe, co-founder of the software company Nandimobile tells IPS.

Tagoe himself graduated in 2007 from the University of Ghana and started Nandimobile in 2010 having run a small business whilst studying. After university Tagoe completed a two-year entrepreneurship training programme at Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology, a not-for-profit organisation in Accra that helps to train and mentor budding Ghanaian entrepreneurs.

“I suppose I fall into the category of people [graduates] that took matters into their own hands,” he laughs.

When young people leave school or university it is likely that they have not had any kind of formal work experience.

“We don’t really have an internship [or] part-time work culture here,” says Tagoe.

For Avemee finding a job has been trying not least because many positions require five years experience, which she does not have.

Gameli Adzaho, 27, who after graduating wanted to further his studies but needed money to fund it, found himself in a similar situation.

“When I graduated in 2007 I was interested in going into health research, but with just the first degree you don’t usually get that opportunity or you would need some years of work experience…so there was a catch 22,” he tells IPS.

Adzaho has since been able to find a job as a science teacher at Keta High School in the Volta Region. In August he won a scholarship to study for an MSc in Environment and Human Health at the University of Exeter as part of a joint initiative by Tullow Oil and the British Council in Ghana. The programme awards 50 young Ghanaians scholarships to study in the United Kingdom with the aim to develop a good human resource base for the oil industry and other areas of development in Ghana.

In 2006 Ghana’s previous government, the National Patriotic Party, set up the National Youth Employment Programme in a bid to boost employment opportunities for young people. The programme was rebranded in 2012 by the current government, the National Democratic Congress, as the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA).

GYEEDA’s reputation came into disrepute when an August report monitoring its progress revealed that funds allocated to youth job creation had been misappropriated.

During a state visit to Benin earlier this month, Ghanaian President John Mahama admitted that GYEEDA had not carried out its duties as effectively as it should.

“There have been a few problems, loopholes that people took advantage off but we are working on that,” he said.

Minister of employment and social welfare Nii Armah Ashietey, Asaga’s replacement following a cabinet reshuffle in April, has since appointed a taskforce to establish a Labour Market Information System to collate useable statistics.

In July, Ashitey urged young people to develop vocational skills and avoid relocating to the cities for white-collar jobs that do not exist. He said 92,000 dollars had been earmarked for skill development programmes and that a Graduates Unemployment Support Scheme had been put in place to address issues of unemployment.

Despite such initiatives Avemee is not convinced. “They [the government] just give empty promises,” she says.

Lack of employment has left many young people questioning whether Ghana is the place for them if they want to get their foot on the job ladder.

Avemee has returned to school in the hope that it will give her a better chance when applying for a job and perhaps help her leave the country. “I would like to go to France… in the next five years,” she confesses.

But Adzaho has his sights firmly set on Ghana. “I will return after the year … I’m 100 percent committed to returning back to Ghana.”