A framework for sustainable provision of low-income housing in Abuja, Nigeria

The provision of adequate housing for low-income groups is a challenge in all countries of the World. This challenge is more severe in developing countries. In Nigeria, there is currently a housing deficit of more than 17 million dwellings. This comes on the background that globally up to 900 million people reside in slums. Furthermore, the United Nations projects that by 2025 about 1.6 billion people face affordable housing challenge. There is evidence in literature that in most countries housing problem is on the increase annually. The annual increase of housing challenge in Nigeria is attributed to high population growth, increasing urbanisation, and growing rate of poverty among citizens. The increase in poverty sets the foundation for inequality. In return this results in spatial segregation, social exclusion, and rising crime rate. Consequently, it is considering this that the United Nations set up a blueprint known as the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2030 to address global related challenges. Specifically, Goal 11 calls for the creation of sustainable cities and communities. A key part of creating sustainable communities is the provision of adequate housing for the urban poor. As a contribution to this effort, this study investigates contemporary provision of housing for low-income groups in Nigeria with the aim of developing a framework for the sustainable provision of low-income housing in Abuja, Nigeria. The study adopted a qualitative strategy with interviews employed as the data collection tool. The choice of interview in this study is informed by its aim to understand the nuances and intricacies of low-income housing provision in Abuja. The approach adopted in the study to uncover the challenges of housing provision in Nigeria is an empirical study with three key stakeholders: policymakers, housing providers, and low-income groups. The study was completed in three phases: the exploratory study, main study, and validation. The research employed content analysis in the first two phases of the study. In the exploratory study (Phase I), manual content analysis was used in analysing the data generated from 15 participants. However, NVivo 11 software was used at the main study (Phase II) for content analysis of data generated from interviews with 36 participants. Furthermore, an online survey was used at validation (Phase III) with 10 participants to construct the proposed framework. To check the workability of the framework, it was internally validated with 10 housing stakeholders drawn from policymaker and housing provider participants and the findings constitute the framework. The research established some drivers and recommendations as fundamental to an adequate housing provision. The drivers and recommendations were each grouped into one of the three pillars of sustainable development, namely, economic, environmental, and social components, and form the overarching structure of the framework. Additionally, the validation enabled the study to rank the level of importance of the drivers and allocated the responsibility of action to stakeholders. Furthermore, the study established the need for structure in policy designs and implementation. The proposed framework primarily is a tool for policymakers to support the decision-making process of low-income housing provision.