SAHIF supporting women empowerment with job opportunities
The South African Housing and Infrastructure Fund (SAHIF), during an intimate information sharing session in KwaZulu-Natal in August, announced that the majority of beneficiaries of its projected 11,600 jobs – to be created over the next three years – will be women. The session was attended by government officials, representatives from the royal family, entrepreneurs and other property experts in the province.
“We are committed to accelerating the delivery of serviced stands as is much needed by poor and middle class South Africans. We will do this across all provinces and that includes KwaZulu-Natal,” said Rali Mampeule, founder and CEO of SAHIF.
He said, “We decided to come to the KZN province in honour of women because as a fund, we are unapologetically for transformation and empowerment of women. This will be proven even more as we continue to roll out our job creation strategies and partnerships with SMMEs across South Africa.”
SAHIF was the official sponsor of the ‘Empowering Women Summit’ which took place 16-17 August at Hampshire Hotel Ballito in KwaZulu-Natal. The tagline for the summit was ‘Radical socio-economic empowerment of women through infrastructure delivery’.
Fast-tracking housing delivery
SAHIF is an initiative created with the aim to fast-track delivery of housing units (serviced stands or ultimately fully developed homes) through acquisition of vacant and unused land near cities, town centres, shops, parks, schools, public transport, public health care and places of work.
Mampeule and his team of real estate experts aim to utilise their extensive experience in the property sector to speed up the delivery of serviced stands to address the high demand of housing in South Africa.
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“The objective is to assist government and the private sector to address the shortfall of promised homes to South Africans that have not yet been built, which exceeds 1.7 million homes,” he said.
With the support of government and private land owners, SAHIF has a target of 108,160 serviced stand units to be delivered over the next three years, which will impact over 430,000 lives with a fund size of R15.3bn.
“The business model is based on a unique self-funding structure eliminating the requirement of external shareholder investment. We are not knocking door to door asking for funding. We are operating with what is already in our database,“ said Kameel Keshav, CFO of the fund.
The roll-out of this fund has previously created 4,731 jobs and will provide an additional 6,953 jobs in the future. This will essentially create a total of 11,684 jobs by the end of the three-year term.
The fund’s long-term goal is to support young, black property professionals in the sponsorship of their studies within the housing sector. This also includes a financial contribution to black-owned SMMEs within the property sector and developing black suppliers in delivery of the fully serviced stands.
Source: bizcommunity.com
