Coalition of builders promoting productive partnerships in the global south, and Pre-launch of the C A H F Housing Finance Yearbook 2025/2026

It is well accepted that the delivery of affordable housing at scale depends on effective and sustained collaboration between the public and private sectors. Each come with different capacities, resources, needs and expectations. These are all necessary, each in their own place, for a successful initiative – but they are often viewed by the parties as being in conflict. Governments at national and local levels, private developers, investors and financiers, housing institutions, and other stakeholders including communities, operate with differing mandates, performance metrics, resource flows, and accountability frameworks. While it may be true that these are sometimes at odds, it is also true that all stakeholders pursue a common objective around which they can collaborate: expanding access to adequate and affordable housing for low-income households.

The main objective of this event will be to establish modalities for ongoing engagement between public + private sectors to support more effective collaboration at both policy and project levels in the common pursuit of affordable housing. On the one hand, the public sector has organized its own systems – cabinet, parliament, city government, local ward committees, etc. Governments are also organized and collaborate beyond their jurisdictions – associations of local governments, regional political bodies, bilaterals, and even UNHabitat are examples. The private sector, on the other hand, has also organized itself into networks - the African Union for Housing Finance, the International Real Estate Federation, the Asia-Pacific Union for Housing Finance, Uniapravi, local banking or developers’ associations, etc. Can we find a way for these representative bodies to connect with each other? Can we leverage the energy of international meetings such as the WUF to build a sustainable conversation that yields tangible, local results in which we can all be proud? This is the focus of this session.

The session will begin with concrete case examples of productive partnerships between public and private sector players. Panelists will highlight what has worked, why it has worked, and the conditions that enabled success. From here, a facilitated discussion will explore how to take forward more collaborative engagements such that the interests and capacities of the players are well aligned for the better realisation of affordable housing delivery.