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Paper short abstract:

This presentation explores how financial innovations developed on the African continent are bringing together a new constellation of devices, landscapes, institutions, currencies, households, and investors to create a novel form of urban housing finance in Senegal.

Paper long abstract:

In December of 2021, Senegal’s sovereign wealth fund, FONSIS, announced its partnership with the International Financial Corporation (IFC), to form a special-purpose financing vehicle, Kajom Capital, to address the urban housing crisis in Dakar. Kajom—which means “future” or “tomorrow” in Diola—aims to facilitate “access to property for all” by making rent-to-own housing contracts available to residents in both formal and informal employment. And these contracts for future revenue streams will then be pooled as financial assets available for purchase by private institutional investors. An increasing array of scholars are now arguing that the growth of such financial arrangements in the Global South is a new form of an old, familiar process of American-style financialization. Yet this framing doesn’t quite capture what is at stake in financial devices like Kajom Capital: such devices bring together African financial institutions, African currencies, African households, and African investors to create a novel form of urban housing finance on the continent. And as a financial device aimed at solving urban problems, the creation of Kajom Capital raises a number of concerns for the study of cities. For example, will the introduction of this device mark a shift in how poor people in Dakar access housing? And how do Senegalese financial experts understand the risks of experimenting in West Africa with a financial technique once at the center of a “global financial crisis” ?