Rowley Projects serves a community in western Kenya, working in partnership with the local people to transform their everyday lives by providing Clean Water, Health Care and Education. These schemes will later provide a pattern that can be replicated in neighbouring areas.

After visiting their friend Ayugi and his family in Nyandiwa, western Kenya in 2000, Stephen and Angela Rowley discovered that the greatest need in this extremely poor area of Kenya, was clean drinking water. The following year they began visiting the area on a regular basis, 2 or 3 times each year and their first project was to establish a bio-sand water filter project.

Through fundraising efforts over the past ten years the primary and secondary schools, Kingsway Kolweny at Nyanadiwa have been rebuilt and classroom blocks at neighbouring schools have been established.

A disused dispensary has been reopened, is kept fully stocked with medical supplies and a health professional  employed.

A sponsorship scheme has been extremely successful, enabling even the poorest families to send their children to school.

During the January trip John inspected all buildings constructed with charity money over the past 4-6 years.  The aim being to establish a repair and maintenance programme. This is a  little known concept in rural Kenya, in fact there isn’t even a word for it!  Alison a former teacher, spent time visiting some of the schools supported by the charity. She enjoyed teaching again, offering encouragement to some staff  qualifying  in special educational needs and observing the way the Kenyan education system operates.

John and Alison have a particular interest in the small businesses being set up in the area and how entrepreneurship is  encouraged and rewarded. They visited a local lady who has set up a successful sewing business and supplies very high quality school uniforms to several local schools. The business studies students at Kolweny Kingway have been left a challenge in the form of a small solar powered light.  They are being encouraged to put together a business plan to offer a rental service  for the solar lights and a re charge service……… Remember there isn’t electricity in this area and the cost of kerosene for the lamps commonly used is expensive!

For further information about Rowley Projects visit the website at www.rowleyprojects.com

• £10 for a “Mooncup”. (Sanitary protection to enable girls to attend school all month.)
• £10 to vaccinate 50 children
• £5 for a treated mosquito net
• £15 for a secondary school uniform
• £10 for a primary school unifom
• £5 for weekly medical technician’s visits
• £80 for one year’s secondary school fees
• Donation towards a new water filter workshop
• Donation towards the dispensary
• £30 for a month’s salary for a teacher
• £20 to paint one classroom externally
• Donation to “Hope beyond Form 4”
• University/College Scholarship Fund (Average costs £200 per term)
• £10 for one month’s internet connection at the school

 

The year from a macro-economic perspective

The past year has been one to forget. The start of 2011 promised a robust and sustained recovery. That was laid to rest with a number of shocks to the global economy. The tragedy in Japan in March, which severely disrupted supply chains around the world, was followed by political brinksmanship in the US regarding the attempt to put in place a credible medium-term strategy to bring down the national debt. Finally, the eurozone crisis has caused high volatility in the financial market since August. These events have battered confidence in the global recovery. Even emerging markets, responsible for most of the global growth in the past 12 months now seem to be losing momentum. Latin American growth has eased, on the back of Brazilian supply bottlenecks and rising interest rates. Meanwhile, emerging markets in Asia also seem to be softening albeit at a pace consistent with a soft landing with falling global demand and earlier policy tightening being the primary reasons.

Developments in property markets broadly reflected the underlying economic fundamentals. Previous fears of emerging ‘bubbles’ in real estate markets in Asia and Latin America eased on the back of slowing growth in those markets and macro-prudential measures put in place to restrict the flow of credit into the property sector. This was particularly in the case in China where the authorities put in place a series of measures designed to curb speculative activity. On the other hand, in many advanced economies the on-going shortfall in bank finance continued to shape the behaviour of real estate.

The outlook for land, property and construction

Emerging markets will continue to drive construction output over the coming year. Both China and Brazil are aiming to meet ambitious affordable housing targets while India, alongside a focus on a similar programme, will also continue to address the need for a much higher level of infrastructure investment. 

According to the latest RICS Global Property Survey, the outlook for the commercial real estate sector is brightest in China, Brazil and Russia, with all three markets expecting to see robust rental and capital value growth. The property sector in many emerging markets will also benefit from the now quite widespread pause in the monetary tightening cycle. Indeed Brazil has started to cut rates on the back of weakening external demand and it could be followed by other countries in due course.

In advanced economies, financing from banks continues to hold back transaction levels, while the deleveraging process in both households and financial institutions’ balance sheets looks likely to continue to dampen demand in the real estate sector. Central banks will in all probability continue to further ease already loose monetary conditions, with the Bank of England’s latest round of quantitative easing unlikely to be the last. In addition, the US Federal Reserve looks set for its own ‘QE3’ in the coming months. The situation in Europe is highly fluid, with a disorderly default in Greece a very real possibility. If such an outcome were to materialise it would have widespread ramifications, straining an already vulnerable financial sector, increasing the borrowing costs of other eurozone countries and further hurting confidence.

However, a more positive outcome is still a possibility if recent policy initiatives addressing the euro zone are implemented promptly and forcefully. This would help restore confidence in financial markets, and start a positive feedback loop that could trigger stronger than anticipated growth in the coming year. 

 

 

 

Simon Rubinsohn

RICS Chief Economist

 

 RICS Global

As the mark of property professionalism worldwide, RICS has members in 146 countries delivering knowledge and services at a local level around the world.