The Nation Newspaper

Tag: low-income

  • MeCure launches programme for low income earners

    Mecure Healthcare Limited has launched a healthcare programme called ‘We Care’ designed to assist low – income Nigerians access first-hand medical diagnosis and treatment.

    According to its Chairman, Mr. Samir Udani: ‘’We Care’ program is meant to assist in detecting symptoms of any health conditions.

    “The health programme captures 61 health investigations. It reveals symptoms of any health conditions, enabling people to be aware and then receive medications from qualified medical professionals as well as drugs for maintenance.

    “What we have done is to design a program to tell you what the problems are by color code, it screens for lifestyle diseases using health meters and also makes referrals to medical professionals if need be and at the same time makes provision for 87 different supplement drugs at no cost.’’

    He added that the programme is a way of assisting low-income earners to get proper healthcare service at their convenience, adding that it is part of their Corporate Social Responsibility.

    “What we do is to enable those with little income get the right healthcare at their convenience without going to a medical facility, which would cost them much.”

    Udani said the ‘We Care program’ is in two stages, including screening, detection, and treatment of non-communicable diseases and for non communicable, “with N19, 900, an individual would get about 61 investigations which would cost N49, 100 ordinarily,” he explained.

    He added that interest persons should sign into the ‘We care’ website for registration at www.wecare.mecure.com,  also available for Android and IOS apps. Registrations can also be done at any Me Cure centres as well.

    “An individual after the result is out will also receive drugs worth same amount free of charge. ‘We Care’ Program is purely a lifestyle wellness program for adults. We also diagnose illnesses that do not have symptoms, including stress because it kills, “Udani added.

  • ‘Workers’ low-income houses coming’

    The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Administration is about going into partnership with the Federal Mortgage Bank to develop low-income houses for low-income workers in the Federal Capital Territory, the minister Malam Muhammad Bello has said.

    He gave the assurance while receiving a delegation of the Federal Mortgage Bank led by its Acting Managing Director, Mr. Richard Esien who paid him a working visit.

    Bello, however, made a case for the consideration of FCT Administration workers first, observing that the administration has the highest number of employees in the FCT.

    According to the statement issued by Deputy Director/Chief Press Secretary, Muhammad Sule, the minister said that there are so many big houses built in Abuja that are unoccupied because of the exorbitant rent charged by landlords.

    He said, “What we need today in Abuja are low income houses which low income earners can afford and that is what my administration would further encourage to take care of the less privileged people in the society”.

    The Minister emphasized that his Administration is prepared to enhance the relationship between the FCT Administration and the Federal Mortgage Bank for the mutual benefit of the two organizations; therefore the staff of the FCT Administration will have to be considered first.

    “We have too many highbrow houses in Abuja which have remained vacant despite the housing deficit the workers are experiencing in the city,” he stressed.

    While decrying a situation where estates were built in the past without provision of recreational facilities, children play ground as well as conversion of green areas to build houses; he directed that henceforth, all new estates must make provision for such essential facilities.

    The minister also directed that a green area be made available for the Federal Mortgage Bank to develop into a befitting Public Park for usage at weekends by the residents free of charge; adding that such gesture should be the Bank’s corporate social responsibility to the immediate society it is operating in.

    Speaking earlier, the Acting Managing Director of the Federal Mortgage Bank, Mr. Richard Esien sought for plots of land to deliver houses to Nigerians in line with President Muhammadu Buhari’s mandate of 5,000 houses yearly.

    He noted that it is only Bwari Area Council out of the six Area Councils in the FCT that has complied with the FMBN Act of contributing two and half percent of all workers earning and therefore appealed to the Minister to prevail on the remaining five Area Councils to make their contributions according to the law.

  • Low-income schools offer quality education

    Low-income schools may charge low fees, but they offer quality education, says Mrs Esther Dada, President, Association for Formidable Educational Development (AFED).

    Mrs Dada, who spoke at a programme to mark the Lagos State literacy Day on Monday at the NIS Gymnasium, National Stadium, Lagos, said many low income schools offer better quality education than public schools.

    “In some public schools, we have some Primary Five pupils who cannot read; and a primary 3 pupil (in our schools) can do better.  Our children are good, we can showcase them anywhere. They are the returns of our hard work. We have confidence in them,” she said.

    The AFED President said low-income schools exist because of the economic situation of many parents who cannot afford more expensive private schools yet seek quality above what is provided in public schools.

    “We want to give back to the society.  We are qualified school owners in the area of education; we major in education and that is why we are able to talk about it. When we hear low income schools, we begin to look at it like they are of low income quality; they are not giving low quality. We are giving quality education that is available at a low cost so that the parents will be carried along,” she said.

    Mrs Dada, who runs the Peacock Schools, Ikorodu, said that the need to change public perception that low-income schools offer poor quality education informed why the association decided to showcase its pupils from low-income schools located in the six education districts of Lagos and Ogun State who read-aloud at the event.

    The pupils, drawn from Primary 4-5 and aged between eight and 10, read from various storybooks without prompting by teachers.

    In her remarks at the event, Mrs Ronke Soyombo, Director-General, Office of Education Quality Assurance, urged the schools to boost literacy in all schools.

     

  • Africa to have improved economy by 2050 – Report

    Africa to have improved economy by 2050 – Report

    Most African countries that today are considered low income will transition to middle income by 2050, the Annual Trends and Outlook Report (ATOR) said.

    The ATOR, released Tuesday by the Regional Strategies Analysis and Knowledge Support System (RESAKSS), a programme facilitated by the international food policy research institute (IFPRI), examines the current and future trends that are likely to shape the trajectory of African economies.

    As the second-fastest growing region in the world, Africa has enjoyed robust economic growth in recent years.

    However, that progress has not been enough to make up for the lost decades of economic stagnation that preceded the recent recovery.

    Secondly, the benefits of this growth have not trickled down to the wider population. Today too many people experience poverty and food scarcity.

    “While the recent growth performance is encouraging, African counties still face major challenges in terms of reducing poverty and eliminating hunger and malnutrition,” said Ousmane Badiane, IFPRI director for Africa.

    Badiane added; “this report shows that policymakers need to continue to refine policies, improve institutions and increase investments to sustain and accelerate the pace of growth as well as its inclusivity or broadness—and the outcomes of their decisions can be the difference between persistent poverty and future shared prosperity for many of Africa’s most vulnerable populations.”

    The report found: Africa south of the Sahara is projected to experience more sustained economic growth in GDP per capita between now and 2030 and 2050.

    By 2050, climate change will result in a 25 percent cereal prices compared with a no climate change scenario.

    Trends that are likely to influence the trajectory of African economies include:

    * More volatile food and energy prices;

    * Rapid urbanization, increasing incomes, and the rise of a middle class;

    * Rapid increase in a young population entering the labor force;

    * Greater Climate Variability; and

    * Agriculture as the largest source of employment.

    African diets are changing in response to rapid urbanization and the rise of a middle class.

    Fifty percent of Africa’s population is projected to live in urban areas by 2020. Processed food now represents a significant share of food purchases, even for the rural poor. Diets have also diversified beyond grains into horticulture, dairy, livestock, fish, and pulses.

    Structural change in Africa is now contributing to productivity growth.

    Africa’s informal goods and services sector (e.g., home goods and handicraft production, and food staples processing) is emerging steadily, and must play a major role in future growth and
    industrialization.

    Industrialization in Africa has been weak, and has contributed little to Africa’s recent growth.

    A new industrial strategy needs to focus on investing in infrastructure, especially energy, transport, and “as envisaged under the African Union Malabo declaration, transforming African economies will need ensuring that future growth is broad based and inclusive, especially of women and youth, a critical component of the Africa we want as depicted in the Africa agenda 2063,” said her Excellency Tumusiime Rhoda Peace, Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture of the African Union Commission (AUC).

    ‘‘This is a sure way for wealth to be created and jobs to be generated,” she added.

  • ‘Low-income Nigerians can own houses’

    ‘Low-income Nigerians can own houses’

    Mr. Babajide Alade, an architect is the MD/CEO of Structuracasa, a construction company focused on large mass housing development projects.  He speaks with HANNAH OJO on how technology can be deployed to meet housing demands in the country 

    What is your take on recent developments in the housing industry in Nigeria?

    Nigeria has a population that is almost approaching 190 million people, the same size as the United States of America that has a land area that is obviously much bigger. The housing sector is still standing by government policy but the government is trying. I think people are shining their spotlight in the housing area.  The Nigerian Mortgage Refinance Company, a new entity is basically starting a secondary market for mortgage finance.  There are not so many banks that can just give out a 100 billion in mortgages so the Mortgage Refinance Company is now buying those mortgages off the banks and structuring them into instruments to sell to investors. That way, the banks have constant capital to be creating mortgages. I think that is one key thing that I see as a policy and a government intervention to help spark housing finance industry in Nigeria.  I am really looking forward to the time we would have a viable industry in Nigeria.

    You accumulated experience practising in real estate development in the United States, what are the things Nigeria can learn when it comes to developing mass housing projects?

    I made a tour of Mexico while I was doing my MBA at the Marshal School of Business in the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Mexico is somewhat similar socio-economically to Nigeria whereby the population breakdown has some few wealthy people at the top although in Mexico they have a decent middle class and then they have a large population of low wage earners. One of the policy trust of President Vicente Fox then was housing. They were basically giving the challenge to the people in the industry to figure out the best way to create mass housing. That involved both the architects and the builders, but more importantly it involved the financial system. They had some policy changes regarding mortgage finance, land laws and land tenure systems. Some of the issues that we are having in Nigeria currently is related to land use but they were able to put things together in a way that allowed large scale housing development. The big engine that was pulling that is housing finance with the most important being mortgage finance.  The fact that they were able to have a successful mortgage finance system enabled low earners who were participating in the society to buy houses that were equivalent at the time of 20-30 dollars. We are talking about 4/5 million equivalent in naira with the ability to pay over 20-30 years whereby they are using only about 25 to 35 percent of their household income.

    How possible is it to repeat this feat in Nigeria where middle income earners find it difficult to own houses?

    I believe this is possible in Nigeria.  Those are the things that drove me into returning after practising in the US.  I felt with my understanding of Nigeria since I grew up here and lived my early life in Nigeria; I could see the difference between Nigeria and some of these countries. In the US, consumer spending is about  70 percent of the economy. There is a big industry related to things that has to do with housing just because housing growth was robust, you have that creating a lot of jobs and that helping to sustain the economy. That is missing completely in Nigeria. That is one opportunity I believe is available for Nigeria. We haven’t task it yet, though we are beginning to try.  The other thing I noticed about Nigeria especially in the mid 2000-2005 when democracy got truly entrenched in 1999 is that a lot of my friends and colleagues in the UK and the United States were coming back to Nigeria. There was a repatriation of experts and we noticed a significant improvement and forward thinking modern ideas in various sectors of the economy.

    Basically, the whole economy is modernising and of the pieces that hasn’t really been touched except in the very highbrow areas in Nigeria like Lagos, Port-Harcourt and Abuja is housing estates.  What is occurring in a large part of the country is that people build incrementally whereby they want to build something bigger but they start small and start adding to it overtime. It’s similar to what you have in agriculture where you have subsistence farming versus mechanized industrial farming. You can translate that into the housing industry. Where there is an opportunity to be able to build large scale housing estate that could afford several things; you can put in infrastructure so everybody is not just building where there is no roads and drainages and gradually it becomes a slum. The problem with housing as it is also with agriculture is land tenure and finance.  Again, there is a huge population of able bodied people who need housing.  A lot of people in middle management find it very difficult to be able to have their own house but in other developing societies like Mexico and Brazil, they can.  So those are the things that I saw that encouraged me to make a plunge back to Nigeria. I felt government was instituting some business regulations that are encouraging the development of job, creating industries and allowing the middle class to grow. That really is a direction that would continue in Nigeria even though there would be hiccups.

    Having identified the issue, what innovation is your company bringing to solve the housing challenge in Nigeria?

    Structuracasa was registered in 2010 but we began operation in 2011 with a small prototype. The main focus of our company is the democratisation of home ownership in Nigeria and across West Africa.  We are currently participating in the construction of housing and we are deploying a technology that we introduced into the country which is called the Aluma Easyset. We are the pioneer and we hold the right to deploy that system of construction in Nigeria. We did get approvals from the various state planning authorities which are the bodies that supervise housing constructions.  We have been working to make whatever local content element we need to test it and to ensure that what we are preparing to deliver enmass to the public is well suited and well-grounded for Nigeria.    We have worked in Legacy estate Ibadan in Oyo State and Abeokuta in Ogun State. We are having discussions with people in Lagos and definitely we will like to work with the government on the benefit of using this novel system of construction to achieve their housing goals. The technology allows us to build much faster than the conventional construction and with better quality and actually at a lower cost especially when you have economics of scale, when you are building a 100 or more units of the same type. How can this technology work in Nigeria putting into consideration our socio-cultural peculiarities?

    We have done a lot of research. We are familiar with concrete in Nigeria. I studied and built in America.  I didn’t build with concrete in America, we were building with gypsum, drywall and wood studs, aluminium but in Nigeria nobody wants to hear what is going on in the next room. Those are some of the cultural things that we feel would ensure our own longevity. It happened in Mexico, there is no reason why it shouldn’t happen in Nigeria. You have a lot of people who want to buy houses and they are not ready to wait, they just want to buy. With the demand that comes with mortgage financing being readily available, there is going to be need for fast, good quality construction and at a lower cost construction. A lot of developers and banks are now going to be looking for solutions; we are already on ground in Nigeria. We are building up slowly and steadily and we have a track record.  The good thing about our system is that we don’t necessarily have to be the developer. We can sell or lease our system to developers or work with government for them to use this system of construction to build the carcass.

    Overcrowding has been a challenger whereby there is a huge population but there is no purchasing power, so how do you intend to get the houses across to people?

    That is a social engineering question. I have my own perception which can be policy ideas but in different countries, you look at the strata of your population and you put so many things in place to help the population. Job creation is important so that people can be gainfully employed and have some money. In some other countries, they provide subsidies for people who want to rent houses. When people cannot afford to own a house and they still need a place to live then the government gets involved somehow by building decent houses which people can rent, they don’t have to own it. The asset is an asset that is owned either by a cooperative or a government or non-profit organisation. Big cooperations can set aside their income and get tax benefits for providing low income housing. Our system of construction can also work in that way because when we are building large scale, we can actually build at a lower cost than the conventional construction. Ours will just be one little element out of a switch of things that can be done to help address housing at the very lowest rung. By building large estates, you can put some infrastructure in place so that people are not living in slum conditions.

    How do you tackle mass production in respect to climate change?

    With respect to climate change, the big area in which we are involved is the reduction in the use of timber which leads to the question of reducing some of the causative effects of deforestation. It is not easy to reforest. In the US and Canada where they have softwoods, they grow in 10-15 years. You can harvest and then constantly replant but that is difficult for us here. If you go to a typical construction site, they are using planks. Apart from the roof whereby the woods stay over the life of the building, all the other woods go to waste.   The rest are going to be burnt somewhere and then you release a lot of emissions. But we use  this aluminium panels, yes they are things and processes that cause carbon footprints while you are using them but these things can be used for over 500 times and after that they can be meted and recycled. That is a big area that we’ll say our own system of construction helps to reduce carbon emissions and carbon footprints.

  • ‘Middle class to rise to 40m’

    ‘Middle class to rise to 40m’

    Some middle-class households in 11 leading sub-Saharan African economies, excluding South Africa, are set to balloon to about 40 million by 2030, as the benefits of economic growth are more inclusively distributed, according to Standard Bank Group Ltd.
    About 15 million of the 110 million households in Nigeria, Angola, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia are lower-middle-class and middle-class, consuming from $15 to $115 a day, the continent’s largest lender said today. About 86 percent of households are low-income, consuming less than $15 a day, it said.
    “Between 2000 and 2014, we’ve seen a tripling of middle-class households across these 11 countries,” Simon Freemantle, a political economist at Standard Bank, said in Johannesburg. “It confirms that idea that Africa has structurally changed, that there has been real improvement in the last 10 years. Not just cyclical, it’s been a real structural change.”
    The emergence of a middle class was found to be most profound in Nigeria, which has Africa’s largest economy. About 4.1 million households, or 11 percent of the West African nation’s population, consume $23 to $115 a day. That’s six times more than in 2000.
    East Africa lagged other regions in the study, with more than 90 per cent of households in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya defined as low-income.