Europe, like Nigeria, has a housing crisis and a construction industry that can’t keep up. But, unlike Nigeria, Europe has, to a considerable extent, adopted a new construction method after governments have exhausted most quick solutions, and the construction industry is struggling to modernise. In Nigeria, supply efforts are too little to meet demand.
Europe has adopted the modular construction system, and, according to a recent report on the housing crisis in the region, the system is already gaining traction in some countries.
Modular construction involves prefabricating building sections, such as rooms, walls, or floor units, in a controlled factory environment before transporting and assembling them on-site. This approach treats housing as a product manufactured on a production line.
According to the report, the system comes with some advantages not found in the traditional construction methods. For instance, projects can be completed 50 to 90 percent faster, as factory work and site preparation occur simultaneously.
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Waste is reduced to 10 to 15 kilograms per square metre, compared to 25 to 30 kilograms for conventional builds. Embodied carbon can be reduced by up to 45 percent, aligning modular construction with the region’s sustainability goals.
The system is growing fast, and as of 2025, the European modular market was valued at approximately €31 billion and is projected to exceed €40 billion by 2030.
A country-by-country analysis shows that Sweden leads the sector, with approximately 45 percent of new housing built using offsite or modular methods. This reflects long-standing policy support, efficient approval processes, and a cultural acceptance of industrialised construction.
This is a huge lesson for a city like Lagos, where housing deficit is close to four million units, according to the latest report on the Lagos real estate market by Real Foundation for Housing and Urban Development (RIRFHUD), which aims to provide information and analytics to enhance the housing market in Nigeria.
To close this gap, Lagos needs to build consistently 187,000 housing units annually for the next 15 to 20 years. These units can only be produced if the state adopts the modular system and provides an enabling environment for it to work.
Germany is the second-largest modular market in Europe, with 26 percent of new single and two-family homes prefabricated in 2024, supported by federal subsidies for climate-efficient housing. The country’s emphasis on precision manufacturing supports the adoption of factory-built construction.
The Netherlands is rapidly expanding modular construction to meet its goal of building 1 million new homes by 2031. Developers are integrating Building Information Modelling (BIM) with modular systems to accelerate design and approval processes.
This system offers a good roadmap for Nigeria to tackle its housing shortage. It is a good model for mass housing that will serve most of those in the low-income bracket.
As a people, time has come for Nigerians to rethink and re-imagine their housing needs, making a shift away from the penchant for brick-and-mortar to systems like modular, which cost less and increase production speed.
Rather than competing with private sector operators and, in some cases, crowding them out, the state governments, particularly Lagos, Abuja, and Rivers, should adopt this system that is working well elsewhere to stem the housing crisis in their cities.
