In Côte d'Ivoire, digital solutions are being created to facilitate access to housing. The objective is to support the real estate sector which is in the grip of overbidding and several abuses.

Engaged in a process of economic recovery since the beginning of the 2010s, Côte d'Ivoire must face countless structural challenges commensurate with its ambitions. Among the challenges is access to housing, a major concern of a country which has experienced strong population growth since the end of the military-civilian crisis. To respond to this problem, the country has embarked since 2012 on a vast program of sectoral reforms aimed at stimulating private investment in the real estate sector and in the massive construction of so-called social housing, with the objective, the production of 250,000 housing units by 2020.

However, despite the government's efforts, the pronounced gap between supply from suppliers and demand from the population remains a major problem. According to the Affordable Housing Finance Center in Africa (CAHF), the housing deficit was estimated at 600,000 in 2018 with an annual need estimated at 40,000 housing units, including 20,000 for Greater Abidjan. In an attempt to remedy the surge in rental costs, the increase in the price of real estate plots and all sorts of practices that can be assimilated to forms of “abuse”, several digital solutions have been developed by young start-ups.

Among others, CoinAfrique, an African startup specializing, among other things, in connecting sellers and buyers (tenants/buyers) of real estate. Created in 2015, this startup facilitates the search and promotion of real estate through an ad system via its mobile platform. The objectives are to limit transaction costs by reducing the number of participants in the sales process and thus to facilitate access to housing for populations.