The colonial powers in Africa introduced urban land
administration systems that were modelled on the
systems of their home countries. The extent to which
indigenous tenure systems were understood,
recognised and incorporated varied from colony to
colony, but it was generally believed that only a
formal system based on a European model could
provide a framework for urban development and
protect the rights of urban property owners (who at
that time were expatriates). These land
administration systems, which were inherited at
independence, are governed by formal rules set out
in legislation and administrative procedures.
However, the legislative provisions and the
administrative systems that were established to
implement them proved quite unable to cope with
the rapid urban growth that occurred after
independence.
The state-led approaches to development favoured
in the 1960s and 1970s were associated with largescale
public intervention in urban land delivery
systems. However, the cost of implementation and
compliance has been too high for low-income
countries, cities and inhabitants. At their extreme,
land and property markets were perceived as
ineffective or exploitative. These views were
translated into attempts to de-marketise land by
nationalisation and/or government control over land
market transactions. Whether or not the concepts
on which such land policies were based were sound,
limited capacity at national and municipal levels
ensured their failure. Administered land supply has
very rarely met demand and attempts to regulate
and register all transactions in land and property have
been universally unsuccessful. As a result, most land
for urban development has been supplied through
alternative channels.
In the early years of rapid rural-urban migration
many households, including poor households, were
able to get access to land to manage the construction
of their own houses for little or no payment, through
‘squatting’ or similar arrangements. Following
research in the 1960s and 1970s, there was a feeling
that the processes of ‘squatting’ and the allocation
of customary land by legitimate rights holders were
fairly well understood. Upgrading projects of the
1970s were designed and implemented on this basis.
Most countries have now reversed some of the most
extreme versions of state intervention, but other
components remain despite serious implementation
failures. There is considerable doubt about whether
recent attempts to improve land management will
be any more successful than previous approaches.
In part, pessimism about the prospects for efficient
and equitable urban land management arises from
the continued lack of resources and capacity in
government, but it also stems from doubts about
the appropriateness of the principles and concepts
on which recent urban land policies have been based.
Much research on land and property in African
towns and cities assumes that the state has both the
duty and the capacity to take on a major
interventionist role in land management. It
concentrates on documenting and explaining the
failures (and more rarely successes) of state
interventions. Despite their significant role in
providing land for urban development, there has
been relatively little recent in-depth research on
processes of informal land delivery or the institutions
(rules and norms of behaviour) that enable them to
operate and that govern the relationships between
the actors involved. To improve policy and practice,
a better understanding is needed of how formal and
informal systems operate, interact and are evolving.