Impact of formalisation of property rights in informal settlements: Evidence from Dar es Salaam city (original) (raw)
Related papers
According to an estimated one billion people are living in informal settlements, and this population is projected to reach 1.4 billion by 2020 globally. Access to land by this large population and particularly those from developing countries is an uphill task owing to laws governing land distribution that tend to be bureaucratic, and tagging in their tow costs that only few can afford. In a bid to house themselves those of lesser means circumvent formal rules enforced by the legal actors in acquisition of property, and in the process create an informal property market. This market adequately caters for the needs of the participants (informal settlement dwellers) who believe they have rights over the properties they have acquired. Many projects geared towards formalising these perceived property rights are based on imported ideologies and partly implemented with visions of channelling the informally held properties into the formal property market.
Environment and Urbanization
Between half and three-quarters of new housing development in African cities has been taking place on land acquired through informal channels. This paper offers insights from a study of self-builders’ investments in informal land and housing in Dar es Salaam and Mwanza, two of the largest and fastest-growing cities in Tanzania. The findings demonstrate that self-builders’ investments in informal land and self-built housing are inextricably linked with household wealth accumulation processes and long-term security. In light of the research findings, the paper offers reflections on the potential impacts of ongoing land formalization processes. The paper argues that the informal housing system has far more advantages than appreciated by proponents of formalization, that the vision of bringing “dead capital” to life is misleading, and that the anticipated emergence of active formal markets for land and housing may not serve the needs or interests of low- and middle-income households.
2020
Informal settlements in Tanzania accommodate more than 70% of the urban population. Owing to this, the Tanzanian government has undertaken several initiatives to address the growing size and number of informal settlements. One such initiative is regularisation which addresses security of tenure for residents of these settlements. Most of the people living in informal settlements lack legal land ownership and as a result properties in such settlements have relatively less value and lack security of tenure. Providing security of tenure is believed to encourage investment into informal households and facilitate the provision of urban services. This study aims to evaluate the process of regularisation in three Tanzanian settlements; Magengenu in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania's largest city), Ibungilo and Isamilo in Mwanza city (the nation's second largest city). Using qualitative data the paper explores the challenges and opportunities that emerged from regularisation. Findings indicate that the regularisation process has facilitated the issuance of title deeds, increased land value and security of tenure. However, a number of challenges were highlighted during regularisation. These include an over-emphasis on the protection of private rights while undermining public interests, a lack of harmonised cost for regularisation, and prolonged delays in completing the regularisation process. These require policy actions, particularly reviewing the national informal settlements regularisation guidelines, as a way to address the weaknesses emerging from regularisation projects in the studied settlements. We conclude that land regularisation remains an important tool to enhance livable cities and protect long-term public and private interests in land development. In order to achieve this, supportive policy actions are required to support the protection of public interests in land regularisation and harmonise the costs of regularisation.
2016
Recent debates on "possession", "economic rights" and "legal rights" exemplify the illusive nature of property rights. Focusing on outcomes from property rights, this paper examines three interrelated questions. Firstly, what is the effect of property rights on development in extra-legal low income settlements? Secondly, what are the underlying mechanisms and processes by which these physical developments are produced? Thirdly, what is the relationship between formal and informal institutions and organisations in the development of extra-legal low income settlements? Viewed from an institutional perspective, this study examines development of two extra-legal low income settlements, one with semi-legal and the other with legalised property rights in Kitwe, the second largest city in Zambia. The aim is to demonstrate how possession and economic and legal rights, conflated into "property rights", have contributed to development in extra-legal settlements. Empirical data was collected using household surveys, focus group discussions, semi-structured interviews and observations. The study finds that the quality of physical development has been improving with strengthening property rights, despite their illegal genesis. Furthermore, the study finds that different strengthens of property rights are associated with different mechanisms and processes in the development of these settlements. Finally, the study finds that where property rights are extra or semi-legal, successful development requires that there be facilitative interaction between formal institutions of the State at one hand, and informal institutions and organisations at the other.
The question of security of land tenure is increasingly becoming more important especially in developing countries, Tanzania inclusive. In the past, the role of promoting security of land tenure was rather top-down and was mainly viewed as a public domain. Recently, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and Community-Based Organisations (CBOs) are playing a significant role enhancing security of land tenure, more so, through informal settlements regularisation and formalisation. This paper discusses the role of Wat-Human Settlements Trust, a National NGO, operating in Hanna Nassif, on how it went ahead to facilitate plot surveying in the area with an ultimate aim of enhancing security of tenure to the property owners. The lessons from this case are presumed to assist in addressing Goal 7 target 11 of the Millennium Development Goals especially in urban areas.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2016
I investigate the mass resettlement of rural population in Tanzania that occurred in early 1970s. The policy was implemented to strengthen the role of the state in establishing villages for communal production and development. The villagisation process that followed was implemented with unclear goals, haste and at some point coercion that it was unlikely to bring any short-term improvement in the rural economy. I exploit a recent survey data to examine the impact of the ujamaa operation on farming activities. The findings show that areas affected by the villagisation in which proprietary rights in land were given to households had significantly better transferability rights and had made significant investments in land. I detect improvement in access to rural credit market and a closing gender gap in land ownership.
Anais to XVIII Enampur , 2019
Resumo: This paper challenges policy discourse prioritizing formalization and regularization of housing and urban settlements and proposes that policy-driven transformation grounded on actually existing local systems and practices is more likely to facilitate inclusive urban production processes and cities. We frame urban production as occurring within locally established formal-informal interfaces in order to investigate on the ground practices associated to provision, permanence and adaptation to fast change. Focus is in the Makumbusho-Tandale wards of the Kinondoni district, in the city of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, East Africa's largest and most populous country, and where informality is a defining feature. In Dar es Salaam, about seventy percent of urban production occurs in unplanned areas. We present the initial elements of a typology of housing and urban production and practice in the area that draws from grounded analysis, and put forward an agenda for future research.
Regularizing housing land development during the transition to market-led supply in Tanzania
Habitat International, 2000
This paper discusses housing land supply problems associated with the transition from administrative land allocation to market-led supply system that was proclaimed in the 1995 national land policy in Tanzania. It underscores the serious resource constraints facing both the central and local government authorities and questions the applicability of the Western-tailored housing land management concepts in resource starved situations such as Tanzania. Using empirical observation from two informal settlements in Dar es Salaam, the paper unveils latent housing land regularization potentials which can be deployed to regulate informal housing land; and engender semi-regularization of &guided' land development and ultimately mitigate future problems associated with retro"tting informal land development. This paper suggests that the long overdue public intervention strategy in the #ourishing informal housing land transaction and development lies in adapting the hitherto neglected opportunities identi"ed in the informal sector.
2015
The evolution and development of informal settlements is hypothesized to be associated with the denial of the urban poor and the low income individual"s access to urban residential land for housing development. Though this assertion is strongly defended by most urban planners and local government decision makers, the emerging hypothesis, which seems to have some validity, is the significant role played by small scale landlords in the supply of housing in the informal housing market to generate rentals from the low income. It is purported in the literature that, the rapid growth of informal settlements within some major cities in the developing world is as a result of small scale landlords who build houses in informal settlements to be rented out to the needy. This is an intriguing assertion that requires some empirical investigation. The paper is an attempt to validate the assertion with respect to the mushrooming and growth of informal settlements in the City of Kitwe in Zambi...