Visit Ghana 2020 - affordable housing project “Amui Djor”
frontal view of the apartments with commercial spaces below
With the impressions of Old Fadama still fresh in our memory we were positively surprised by the visit of a housing project in Ashaiman, a suburb in the north-east of Accra. This is considered a very successful affordable housing project. It is a collective effort of the local government, UN-Habitat, landowners, the traditional council of chiefs, Ghana Federation for the Urban Poor and the Peoples Dialogue. the building houses 32 families in two room apartments. Most of the families share both a kitchen and a toilet/shower with one other family. The ground floor is reserved for commercial activities and a toilet house for the neighbourhood (the profit is part of the business model of the whole apartment block).
Financially everything is very transparent, due to the collective courtyard the building feels open and protective and people meet each other easily. Recently the roof was covered with solar panels to reduce the energy costs. In general the costs for rent are remarkable cheap, even to the slum-standards! This looked like a good benchmark for unibrick.
