Abidjan hosted, on 25 and 26 February, the first Universities of Housing. The objective is to strengthen the capacities and knowledge of actors on solutions for financing the production of affordable housing in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), an area of more than 120.2 million inhabitants. At the end of this two-day meeting, the bottlenecks preventing the successful financing of these homes were identified with the eight WAEMU countries, Mauritania and technical and financial partners (Ptf) who took part. The lack of comprehensive land strategies and a lack of capacity in terms of financial structuring of operations that result in a loss of potential land revenues in the long term, the lack of operational public or private land developers with the financial capacity to carry out large-scale projects on the long-term discussions were discussed at this meeting. Reading the final declaration of the 2020 Housing Universities, the Commissioner in charge of the Department of Community Spatial Planning and Transport (Datc), Dr Paul Koffi Koffi also noted the low initial financing capacity for the acquisition of land development and the guarantee of projects, the lack of appropriate tools in the regulatory and legal framework to quickly mobilize land for urban projects. At the end of this meeting, which mobilized a hundred experts, the WAEMU Commissioner, during his intervention, also highlighted the difficulties encountered by operators to raise funds and carry out housing operations adapted to demand, the inadequacy of some housing programs in relation to the demand of the population. In addition to the inadequacy of financing to develop an affordable rental offer, the WAEMU Commissioner also recalled that the inadequacy of architectural and environmental design is also obstacles to housing financing. "Reporting on these observations, we support the Ida Regional Project developed since 2011 by the WAEMU Commission," said Dr. Paul Koffi Koffi. This WAEMU-supported project is structured around two main axes, namely: the financing of demand via a loan of 130 million US dollars (more than 75 billion CFA francs) from the World Bank granted to the West African Development Bank (Boad) and the support/strengthening of supply which requires technical support from the 'WAEMU. At the opening of the works, Bruno Nabagné Koné, Minister of Construction, Housing and Urban Planning, recalled the need to act quickly because the WAEMU zone is facing a shortage of housing units estimated at 3.5 million; with an annual need of 800,000 housing units.