Across Africa, governments, the private sector and DFIs are each grappling with how best to structure their investments in affordable housing, such that the construction of affordable housing is increased, and good housing markets develop. Across the breadth of tools and approaches, blended finance has emerged in recent years as a particular methodology for ‘blending’ concessional funding with market-based, commercial investments, to realise a set of specified impacts, both financial and other. The approach is well noted and adopted in very many of the social sectors. In housing, however, successful blended finance transactions are rare.