Like an enormous grey skeleton, a six-storey apartment building looms over a quiet street in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. Concrete balconies and bedrooms are discernible. But there are no windows, doors or lights. And the only painting is of the scatological variety from the sole residents: crows. How long has it been like that? “Five or six years,” says the guard. Property in Senegal has been booming, but concrete is frequently poured into buildings only for construction suddenly to stop, often for many years.

Half-made buildings are everywhere in African cities. In Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, the government last year said it would take over 600 of them because they had been unfinished for so long. Dakar’s skeletal structures illustrate many of the reasons why unfinished buildings are so common—and the costs of this problem...

The Economist: Why are there so many unfinished buildings in Africa?