Our approach to land registry reform, concessional financing and discretionary-allocation reform — explained in plain language.
The Gambia does not have a housing shortage in the abstract sense. It has a housing-affordability shortage — homes exist, but the people who need them cannot pay for them on a working wage. Our platform commits to ten thousand new affordable homes over a five-year programme. This brief explains how.
The three locks
Three structural issues hold affordable housing back. First, the land registry is incomplete and contested, which makes lending against title deeds risky and therefore expensive. Second, mortgage finance carries an effective rate that puts ownership out of reach for almost any household earning a public-sector wage. Third, discretionary land allocation — where ministers personally sign off on plots — distorts the market and rewards political connection over need.
Each of these has a fix. None of them is exotic. All of them have been resisted because they redistribute power away from people who currently benefit from the status quo.
Land registry reform
We will complete a national land registry digitisation programme within the first eighteen months of government. Every parcel mapped, every title resolved, every dispute either adjudicated or formally referred. The work has been started and stopped under three previous administrations — we will finish it, on a fixed timeline, with a published monthly progress dashboard.
Concessional financing
The central bank, working with two named partner institutions, will administer a concessional mortgage facility for first-time buyers earning under a defined ceiling. The rate will be capped, the term standardised, and the eligibility criteria published in advance — so nobody can claim they were "missed" by an opaque process.
Affordable housing is not about subsidising buyers. It's about removing the structural costs that make ordinary homes unaffordable in the first place.
Discretionary allocation reform
Ministerial discretion in land allocation will end. Allocations will move to a published, rules-based system administered by an independent commission, with appeal rights for unsuccessful applicants and full transparency on every award. The legislation is drafted. We are ready.
Costed and timed
The full costing is in the policy paper accompanying this brief. The headline numbers: a registry programme funded by a World Bank facility already in principle agreed, a concessional facility funded by a 0.25 percentage-point reallocation within the central bank's existing reserve management, and a discretionary-reform bill that costs essentially nothing because it removes a function rather than creating one.
Ten thousand homes is not a slogan. It is what the maths produces when you remove the three locks above. We will publish progress quarterly, in real numbers, and you can hold us to it.