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DUBAI. — Over the past decades, it has been burned into most people’s minds that Africa is a continent of economic and social distress plagued by constant strife, its institutions being rife with corruption and lacking governance.

This might be true for the handful of Africa’s failed states that certainly exist, but is not the case for most of the continent’s nations, which in fact enjoy robust political and economic progress, and are outnumbering the few chaos countries by far.

Many people make the mistake of underestimating the continent, particularly in terms of investment opportunities, for example in real estate.

Yes, Africa’s real estate markets have traditionally lagged behind those of developed and most developing economies, and the level of property investment in Sub-Saharan Africa is still comparably low, while tapping potential opportunities sometimes can be met by practical challenges.

Nonetheless, most of Africa is not standing still, but moving up the development ladder at an impressive pace.

“Africa’s economic growth began to accelerate around the turn of the century, following several decades of economic stagnation,” says Peter Welborn, head of Africa at property firm Knight Frank.

“Since 2000, Africa has averaged growth of over 5 percent per year. The larger emerging economies of this region, such as Nigeria, Kenya, Angola and Ethiopia, have increasingly been the key drivers of the continent’s growth.

“Tanzania, Rwanda, Ivory Coast and Senegal have also emerged as star performers.”

There are a couple of factors that will drive the African real estate sector in the mid term. One is the continent’s population boom.

Africa’s population currently stands at over 1 billion and is expected to reach 2,4 billion in just 40 years.

This means that in the coming decades, hundreds of millions of Africans will need additional roofs over their heads.

“This population growth is the strongest underlying reason for the huge demand for accommodation and real estate properties across Africa,” says John-Paul Iwuoha, founder and head of Smallstarter Africa, an investment and entrepreneurship community based in Lagos, Nigeria.

Calling Africa “the hottest property market in the world”, Iwuoha points out the huge number of people migrating into urban areas in search of jobs and business opportunities.

“Going by the current estimates, 300 million more Africans will become city people and urban dwellers by 2030,” Iwuoha says. — Gulf News.