Financializing Africa’s urban peripheries: the rise of housing microfinance

ABSTRACT Housing microfinance is transforming Africa’s urban peripheries. While many actors, factors, and processes are driving the financialization of peripheral urban Africa, social enterprises and fintech (financial technology) play a key role in making these spaces the “new real estate frontier”. At the same time, efforts to promote financial inclusion are hampered by longstanding challenges related to informality and state bureaucracy that are becoming important sites of regulatory reform and political contestation. The rise of housing micro-finance in urban Africa poses important questions and calls for more critical geographical research. In this piece, I highlight three themes that deserve particular attention: models and impacts, informality and fintech, and restructuring of states and urban governance.