Sticking with tradition

How effective are new customary land delivery systems?

Excluded from formal government and private sector land delivery systems, the urban poor in sub-Saharan Africa increasingly obtain shelter on urban land through other means. Many do this through transactions that borrow features from traditional rural customs of land management so that their claims to use land and buildings can be identified, legitimised and defended. Although these informal transactions are sometimes tolerated by governments, they are rarely legalised. Nevertheless, they are accepted by the social networks within which the people live.

These new or neo-customary processes blend pre-colonial land management procedures with low-income household strategies for securing access to land and the production of informal settlements and have their own actors and procedures. Like customary systems, they achieve group and community recognition (perhaps using clan or family ties in many cases) to back up claims of rights to use land and/or buildings, to operate mechanisms that can resolve disputes over these use rights and to delineate and maintain the boundaries of the plots. Also like customary systems, leaders that are accepted by the group may take day-to-day decisions about land delivery. Often such recognition is generated because the land is delivered by the holder of genuine customary rights or by a genuine customary leader. However, government officials commonly view neo-customary processes as troublesome, giving rise to policies the unintended impacts of which can instead reduce the access of poor households to shelter, as well as the security and capital assets of those already housed.

During the 1970s and 1980s, many observers saw customary processes of land management for housing in Africa as a relic of past practices that would be eradicated by economic development. This did not occur. Low-income demand for land has been overwhelmingly met by informal delivery systems and neo-customary practices have been prominent within these informal systems. The failure of government and the weakness of formal private sector systems has possibly strengthened the attractiveness of customary procedures and encouraged the development of new forms of customary systems in peri-urban areas.

Rather than being out-dated, customary systems appear to have a surprising ability to adapt to change. Neo-customary systems are delivering land that formal systems fail to provide to poor people for urban housing and basic urban services. At the same time, official procedures for land development and management are becoming more informal in their nature, perhaps being re-interpreted by informal or customary actors.

France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the Development Planning Unit at University College London are researching neo-customary urban land delivery systems in nine African countries. The researchers are exploring how the systems are working, changing and adapting, how their actors are interacting with democratically constituted governments and whether the systems are viable alternatives to formal means of delivering urban housing land to the poor.

Based on prior research, they are exploring the possibilities that:

• The delivery of land for housing through informal neo-customary processes is still playing a major role in sub-Saharan Africa, especially for poor households.
• These processes can adapt to change and thus be expected to survive and continue to expand their coverage.
• Neo-customary systems are effective enough to serve as alternatives to formal government and private-sector systems in providing people access to urban land, while providing major advantages to those who are poor.

The research questions the relevance of land management models put forward by international finance institutions, such as the World Bank - with the support of local government officials in charge of land management - in the name of modernisation. These models failed to take into account the diversity of tenure rules established under different property systems that coexist in a given area/location, thus worsening the exclusion of the majority of the African urban population.

Considerations for policy-makers include:

• Land policies that attempt to destroy neo-customary informal systems may reduce the ability of the poor to access land.
• It may be easier and more effective to serve the land needs of poor people by strengthening neo-customary systems than by attempting to improve formal systems of land delivery.

Nevertheless, policy-makers may need to be on guard against neo-customary practices that threaten to significantly reduce the quality of governance.

Alain Durand-Lasserve
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Paris
Permanent address:
7 rue Sante Garibaldi
33000 Bordeaux, France

T +33 5 56 96 17 36
F +33 5 56 99 15 85

a.durand-lasserve@wanadoo.fr

Michael Mattingly
Development Planning Unit
University College London
9 Endsleigh Gardens
London WC1H 0ED
UK

T +44 (0)207 679 1104
F +44 (0)207 679 1112

m.mattingly@ucl.ac.uk

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