As affordable housing investors across Africa seek to extend their market offerings to lower income households, an understanding of the poorest 40% of a country’s population (the Bottom 40 or B40) has become an important consideration. To support investors’, policy makers’ and other housing sector practitioners’ intentions, this project sought to develop a mechanism for identifying B40 households and assessing their housing need. The dashboard currently includes data for ten countries including: Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda.

The dashboard is based on data from the Demographic and Health Surveys Program, a standardised dataset which is an excellent tool for cross-country analysis. The data allows for the generation of indicators that examine household and individual characteristics, dwelling characteristics, access to services and an overall evaluation of housing inadequacy at the national, urban or largest city level.

The team utilised cutting-edge open source tools to design an end-to-end solution encompassing data storage, scalable app services and final presentation, resulting in an aesthetically pleasing and intuitive interface that allows frictionless and dynamic access to relevant statistics of interest to the particular user.

The final product is a dynamic, flexible dashboard that allows the user to explore key indicators for ten African countries at a national, urban, or largest city level. These indicators can be viewed in three different ways:

• Compare B40 across countries compares the B40 of up to four countries at once for a broader view of the state of the B40 across Africa
• Compare by wealth segment compares the B40 against the Middle 40% (M40) and Top 20% (T20) for a selected country, allowing for greater analysis of within-country dynamics

Compare by housing situation allows for the comparison of various housing segments based on housing adequacy, access to services, and dwelling materials among others

https://housingfinanceafrica.org/documents/b40-dashboard/