The managing director and CEO of TAF Africa Global, Mustapha Njie, told journalists on Saturday despite the proliferation of real estates in the country, they have raised the bar by according their housing facilities with good infrastructures.
The company earmarked a target of constructing 10, 000 houses in ten years – with 1000 houses to be built each year.
The CEO indicated that they are also involved in regional initiatives in trying to address social housing problems in Africa.
With most of such developmental projects limited to only in the urban areas, TAF says it has a plan to expand into the rural areas, but worried by the low demand of potential buyers in the area. He said such projects will need broader initiatives which involves the government.
“Recently we were able to acquire land as far as Pirang, so maybe we are shifting towards rural Gambia,” he told journalists at his Dalaba Estate, which is located off the Sukuta-Jabang Highway.
“But as a private developer you need to understand that there is a cost to the development – supply and demand.”
“If the demand is not in the rural Gambia, no matter who, is not possible to go and build there – there must be a demand. These houses if you build them in rural Gambia I don’t think they can buy them there and we are private developers.”
He informs that they are trying to involve government and other international initiatives to provide housing needs for everybody.
“We want to put roofs over the head of everybody across the continent. This includes people in both the urban and rural areas.”
CEO Njie indicated that their housing comes with infrastructure unlike many other agencies.
“There is a proliferation of real estate agencies and companies everywhere. It is becoming the widest and the easiest business that you can do. I can claim being the most experienced developer in this country and I can tell you what we are developing is modern slopes. You cannot go to most of these real estate companies and find the infrastructures addressed,” he said.
He guarantees that TAF’s housing comes with good road connection, stable electricity, water and security.
“For example, we have done four kilometers of road and these are first-class roads. The component of the road is with 200millimeter thick latria compact. The pavement blocks you see here are 8 centimeter concrete pavement blocks so these will almost last forever. Same goes with power, we have two transformers just for the estate.”
“So as you buy from us because we have raised the bar to this standard, this helps to improve the general infrastructure of this country – meaning modernizing it.”
Njie believes that the construction business in the country is significantly contributing to the country’s GDP through providing revenue to the government like VAT, corporate tax and social-corporate responsibility.
“I think construction measures a very high percentage of Gambia’s GDP.”
