Feasibility studies are meant to protect projects from failure. In Africa, they often do the opposite — creating a false sense of certainty while the real risks remain invisible. This essay exposes what traditional feasibility models ignore, and why Africa needs delivery-led intelligence, not spreadsheet comfort.
Feasibility studies are designed to answer one question:
“Can this project work on paper?”
But Africa does not fail on paper.
It fails in practice.
Across South Africa — and across the continent — millions of rands are spent producing immaculate feasibility documents: market demand curves, IRR projections, cost-to-completion models, absorption rates, sensitivity analyses.
And yet, project after project collapses after approvals, after funding, even after construction begins.
The uncomfortable truth is this:
Most feasibility studies do not measure whether a project can actually be delivered.
They measure whether it can be financed.
The Feasibility Illusion
A typical feasibility model will tell you:
- whether your selling price is viable,
- whether your debt cover ratio is acceptable,
- whether your return profile meets investor expectations.
What it will not tell you is:
- whether the municipality can process your SDP on time,
- whether your contractor has real on-site management depth,
- whether your community understands the project or resents it,
- whether political cycles will disrupt your approvals,
- whether the workforce pipeline exists in the catchment area,
- whether informal traders will destabilise site logistics,
- whether title transfer backlogs will choke your cashflow six months after handover.
These are not peripheral risks.
They are the risks that kill projects.
Paper Viability vs Delivery Reality
In South Africa, housing delivery is not constrained by capital.
It is constrained by execution intelligence.
Feasibility models treat delivery as a fixed variable — something assumed to happen once funding is secured.
But delivery is not mechanical.
It is behavioural, political, social, operational, and emotional.
It involves:
- municipal officials under political pressure,
- communities with legitimate historical trauma,
- contractors balancing thin margins and cashflow stress,
- financiers managing systemic exposure,
- developers carrying reputational and personal risk.
None of this fits into an Excel cell.
The Hidden Cost Curve
Traditional feasibility focuses on construction costs and sales income.
Delivery-led feasibility focuses on failure points.
These include:
- approval fatigue,
- trust erosion,
- stakeholder misalignment,
- mobilisation delays,
- labour instability,
- procurement bottlenecks,
- post-handover governance collapse.
These costs do not show up in feasibility models — but they dominate real-world outcomes.
Why Africa Needs a New Feasibility Doctrine
The African development landscape is not a clean-room environment.
It is:
- politically dynamic,
- socially sensitive,
- economically uneven,
- operationally fragile.
A project is not viable because the numbers add up.
It is viable because:
- the delivery chain is aligned,
- the community has ownership,
- the municipality has skin in the outcome,
- capital is structured around performance,
- the developer is supported beyond approvals.
This is not a technical framework.
It is a human system.
The Mr. Affordable Living Approach
At Mr. Affordable Living, feasibility is not a report.
It is a delivery intelligence exercise.
We interrogate:
- Who carries the emotional weight of this project?
- Who loses when it delays?
- Who benefits when it succeeds?
- Where does trust already exist — and where must it be built?
Because no spreadsheet can model trust.
Closing Reflection
Africa does not need better feasibility studies.
Africa needs better truth-telling.
Until feasibility includes delivery psychology, political economy, community readiness, and operational capacity, it will continue producing projects that look perfect — and perform poorly.
Housing is not a financial product.
It is a social contract.
And no contract survives if its signatories were never part of the design.
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