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the economic significance of housing. Since the late 1980s, various statements by the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (UNCHS) and the World Bank have asserted this significance, arguing for a strategy that would enable the housing sector to play an active role in economic and social development. [11]

Many observers have emphasized the novelty of this point of view, and assumed that in earlier decades international agencies did little in the housing field. For example, one has commented that ‘only exceptional colonial administrations had concerned themselves with the housing conditions of the native population’. [12] But such judgments are hasty. Few have attempted to examine the earlier policies of international agencies in the housing field, and none have sought to identify their economic logic. [13] Through a survey of the statements and actions of those agencies since the 1930s, this article sets out to rectify this neglect and argues that housing has long been viewed as a tool of economic development, although to this day its full potential has not been realized.

2.4. MORTGAGE FINANCE: INSTITUTIONS AND MECHANISMS

Housing finance in underdeveloped countries remains a big problem. Residential lending is typically small, poorly accessible and depository based. Lenders remain vulnerable to significant credit, liquidity and interest rate risks that is why housing finance is relatively very expensive and most often rationed. The importance of developing robust systems of housing finance is paramount as emerging economy governments struggle to cope with population growth, rapid urbanization and rising expectations from a growing middle class.

2.4.1. Mortgage finance and poverty

The size of such loans (given the cost of properties) and the requirement for a deposit or down payment to cover a significant part of the cost means that the middle of the income scale. As noted already, low-income households may lack the finance for the down payment and are likely to lack formal legal title deeds; therefore, they are unlikely to be able to offer acceptable collateral. The poor face further problems in their search for housing finance. [14]

Despite such difficulties, one emerging global trend is the effort to extend mortgage finance to lower income groups, expanding the market for housing finance and increasing formal homeownership. Such policies are partly commercial and partly state led. The commercial interest is in extending financial services to a new group of people. [15] The last two decades have been ones of financial deregulation, with increasing numbers of financial agencies and growing competition in financial services. In many countries, governments have been behind strategies to extend mortgage finance to those who have traditionally been unable to afford such loans. [16] Governments have multiple reasons to support homeownership, including the significance of the construction industry for economic growth and prosperity, the significance of shelter for wellbeing (and poverty reduction), and the political popularity of such policies.

2.4.2. A state involvement in Housing Bank

Zambia

Zambia can be taken as a good example of a country in Africa which is involved more in housing sector. This started during the period of the second and third National Development Plans where the government implement