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Good practice Imported

Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia — Community-Led Savings and In-Situ Upgrading

Namibia · Windhoek · See the Namibia profile · See the Windhoek profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 9% 86/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Since the early 1990s, Namibia's shack-dweller savings groups have secured land tenure for 3,200 households and self-built 1,350 homes at about a third of conventional cost. Namibia now targets nationwide informal-settlement upgrading by 2027, though land remains scarce.

3,200
Households with secured land tenure
1,350
Houses self-built through the programme
~1/3
Cost of self-built housing vs. contractor-built
~23,000 members across ~700 savings groups
Federation membership
217,000 28.7% of 756,339 households
Households in informal settlements nationally (2023 census) (2023)
~300,000 units
National housing backlog
Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia — Community-Led Savings and In-Situ Upgrading

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia (SDFN) & Namibia Housing Action Group (NHAG)
Period
1992-2026
Keywords
informal settlements, land tenure, community savings, housing

Context

Since the early 1990s, the Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia (SDFN) and its technical partner, the Namibia Housing Action Group (NHAG), have organised residents of informal settlements into daily community savings groups, run predominantly by women, that pool small contributions, negotiate directly with municipalities for serviced land, and jointly plan settlement layouts ('blockerf' plots) before building.

Objectives

The model aims to secure land tenure and affordable, community-built housing for informal settlement residents by replacing individual, ad hoc negotiation and construction with collective savings, land negotiation and self-build financed through a member-managed loan fund.

Activities

Members can borrow from SDFN's Twahangana Fund, a community-managed revolving loan facility, to buy materials and build homes with their own labour. Savings groups also set aside support for elderly and terminally ill members. The federation has grown to around 23,000 members across roughly 700 savings groups nationwide.

Results

To date, 3,200 households have secured land tenure through this process and 1,350 houses have been built, at roughly a third of the cost of contractor-built housing. Nationally, Namibia's 2023 census recorded 217,000 households (28.7% of the country's 756,339 households) living in informal settlements, against a national housing backlog of roughly 300,000 units.

Conclusions

In 2026, SDFN national facilitator Edith Mbanga urged the Namibian government to prioritise in-situ upgrading over relocation; the government has since set a 2027 target for informal-settlement upgrading, working with SDFN/NHAG and the post-2018 Community Land Information Programme. SDFN itself cautions that land scarcity is the binding constraint on scaling the model further.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k)
Time to results
Long (> 3 years)
Staffing & skills
Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia (SDFN), Namibia Housing Action Group (NHAG), Twahangana Fund (community-managed revolving loan facility), Namibia's Ministry of Urban and Rural Development, Community Land Information Programme (post-2018)

Conditions for success

  • daily community savings discipline organised at grassroots level
  • direct negotiation between savings groups and municipal authorities for serviced land
  • community-led settlement planning ('blockerf' plots) before construction
  • member-labour self-build financed through a peer-managed revolving loan fund, cutting costs to roughly a third of contractor-built housing
  • women-led savings groups with built-in support for vulnerable members
  • formal government partnership and co-funding via the Ministry of Urban and Rural Development

Common failure modes

  • land scarcity is identified by SDFN itself as the binding constraint on further scale-up

Commonly funded by

Philanthropic / foundation funding National / regional programmes

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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