Land Tenure, Property System Reforms and Emerging Urban Land Markets in Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper was written for and presented at a Lincoln Institute course titled, “Comparative Policy Perspectives on Urban Land Market Reform in Eastern Europe, Southern Africa and Latin America,” held July 7-9, 1998.

Over the last decade, urban land market reform has emerged as one of the key issues in developing countries. In most, reforming land markets is rarely an initiative that comes from the governments concerned; rather, it comes from international financial institutions and cooperation agencies in the developed countries. These reforms have aimed at developing land markets in the context of more open economies, accelerated privatization and a redefinition of the role of the state (Doebele 1994; Dowall and Clarke 1991; World Bank 1993). In Africa, because the supply of land for the urban poor is still dominated by informal/customary interests (Mabogunje 1992), issues of ownership rights are at the heart of current reforms.