By Bennett Oghifo
The Owner/CEO TAF Africa Global, Mustapha Njie has said his vision over the next 20 years is to build a million homes across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).
Njie, who is the promoter of the Golf Estate in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, said this in a television programme in The Gambia, recently.
Taf, as he is popularly known, said, “Anything (housing project) that’s under a thousand (units), I’m not interested, because my vision over the next 20 years is to develop one million homes across Sub-Saharan Africa and that’s why we are in Nigeria.”
According to him, Nigeria has a deficit of close to 20 million homes, stating that the company got a cautious reception when they tried to stake their claim. “When we came here very few people believed in us. They felt oh no, no that’s another you know, fly by night or a ‘419’, as we say in Nigeria, oh he’s a scammer you know he’s saying he doesn’t need any money all he needs is just the land, oh give him the land, let him see.
“And actually, even the land that I was given was all muddy, you know, this is Rivers State, in Rivers State there’s no land so we had to sand-fill using 650,000 cubic meters of sand.”
He said the whole Golf Estate is built on 40 hectares, saying “this is the first project I’ve done outside of the Gambia, big project and it is in Rivers State, Port Harcourt which is called the Garden City. We’ve built over a thousand houses.
“Over 6,000 We have the apartments which are over 600 hectares, 600 and over units, you know we have town houses, we have villas you know in total, when everything is ready we have over a thousand, 1,100 and so on. You know I am a made in Gambia product, I’m an African product everything I know, everything I have, everything I’ve made in my life, I made it in Africa.”
On his partners, he said that question was asked him very often but he said, “I don’t need a partner I can do probably what anybody can do, who is of a different race, but in Africa today anything big like this that you want to do, they think that it’s done by somebody as we call it in Nigeria ‘Oyinbo’, meaning a white guy or the Chinese and if you look at Africa today we need to be very careful, you know because the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is on, it started 1st of January and you are going to have a population of 1 billion people. It is the biggest economy in the world, but what have we seen recently? We have seen all the big players, all the first, you know, the big players, like big countries are now forging partnerships with Africa. You know Africa, China initiative, Africa US, Africa British, Africa Europe, that is to get now Africa, you know these guys still coming in and you know controlling our economy.
“It’s high time that as Africans, we take ownership and we hope that the African continental free trade area will empower Africans, you know to take over the economy of Africa and it can be done, you know, look because we are an African out-fit we don’t see borders.
“And I think that’s what the AfCFTA is all about that Africa without borders. So any African that is qualified that can add value to what we are doing, we would take you on board, let’s not wait for others to come and exploit all these opportunities.”
He said the problem in Africa is bad leadership. “The thing that is bringing Africa down is poor leadership. If our leaders do the right thing, then Africa will shoot-up. So, if there is one thing we need to address, we need to address leadership.”
