Kuyasa's History: Looking Back

F ounded in 1999, the Kuyasa Fund was first established in the Cape Town metropolitan area to meet the growing demand for housing finance.  Over the last decade, the Kuyasa Fund has evolved into a highly specialized housing finance institution, which has pioneered an effective microcredit methodology geared towards supporting low-income homeowners.

Housing has been at the forefront of the national agenda since the ANC won the democratic election in 1994.  The ultimate goal was to create sustainable housing developments whereby township residents would own their properties.  The need for Kuyasa became apparent shortly after the People’s Housing Process (PHP) was adopted by the Department of Housing in 1998.  The PHP sought to encourage the participation of households and communities in the development and delivery of these homes. The intention was that by managing the building process, people could build larger houses as they saved money by building the houses themselves.  However, very often, the incremental building could take years, as people overestimated their capacity to build larger houses and exhausted their government housing subsidy and savings.  Due to the economic status of the housing recipients, many were excluded from formal credit access.  Kuyasa stepped in to fill this niche and began to lend to clients at the time of subsidy disbursement so as to increase house size at the point of delivery.  Since 2002, Kuyasa has extended its loan product to beneficiaries who have already received their subsidy homes but wish to extend or improve the existing structure.

Over the last decade, Kuyasa has successfully provided over 12 800 clients with financial products and has expanded its geographic reach to both the Western Cape and Eastern Cape.  Kuyasa’s clients are predominantly women who typically work in the informal employment sector, and have household incomes of less than ZAR 3,500 per month.  Kuyasa has developed a recognized expertise in housing finance loans for which there is an unmet demand in the South African marketplace.  In order to effect the greatest change, Kuyasa has begun a process of consolidation and expansion over a 5 year period which aims to scale up our activities across a wider geographical area.