Pan African housing development financier Shelter Afrique has entered into a strategic partnership with fintech startup iBUILD Global to work together to provide funding for affordable housing and manage its housing projects in member states
The MOU, signed in Nairobi by Shelter Afrique CEO Andrew Chimphondah and iBUILD Co-founder and Chairman Lew Schulman, paves the way for collaboration between Shelter Afrique and iBUILD by helping Shelter Afrique to raise capital in the form of new Class C shareholders to enable Shelter Afrique to fund Public-Private Partnership (PPP) projects.
iBUILD will assist Shelter Afrique to raise capital for a fund to be created to specifically provide construction finance to contractors and developers low and middle-income housing.
“This MOU now sets the pace for Shelter Afrique to work closely with iBUILD to create collaterals and joint pitches towards raising capital through development funds to be managed by Shelter Afrique,” said Chimphondah.
According to the MOU, iBUILD will also provide its patent-pending platform for project management capabilities across the entire portfolio of Shelter Afrique projects as well as transparent accounting of all funds disbursed.
“Through this partnership, iBUILD will manage the delivery of a platform to Shelter Afrique for the purpose of adopting the technology for all its housing-related lending and offering technical assistance to its contractors and developers involved in PPP projects,” Schulman added.
Schulman stated that the customisation of the iBUILD Lender Platform for Shelter Afrique will give the latter the ability to report data on projects in real-time as well as to report the impact of its funding on the projects it supports.
“The iBUILD tools will help shelter Afrique reduce loan approval time and have greater oversight and real-time quality control of project it finances,” Schulman noted.
Chimphondah stated that the partnership would be beneficial in expanding Shelter Afrique’s capacity building programme and support its centre of excellence.
“In April this year, Shelter Afrique launched its centre of excellence where we train contractors and developers undertaking PPP projects. The platform will enable us to offer training, accreditation, and certification to these contractors and developers across 44 member states without necessarily coming to Shelter Afrique headquarters in Nairobi. Secondly, the platform will help Shelter Afrique improve transparency for investors - investors want to know how their money is being invested and this platform will be vital for us in updating them,” Chimphondah concluded.
