African cities: Competing claims on urban land

By: Paul Jenkins

Many African cities are considered to be in crisis, as measured by the ‘formal’ institutional order of late capitalist modernity, and as such, much of the actual functioning of these cities is considered ‘informal’, a nomenclature inherently based on negative concepts of illegal, un-authorised and non-regulated. However these informal activities are often more socially and culturally legitimate, as well as economically essential, for the majority and hence politically powerful. As African studies have shown for some time, African urban areas in many ways draw on norms and institutions derived from indigenous and often pre-capitalist socio-cultural orders, in which the now dominant ‘Western’ rationalities are likely to have played a limited role. What do we know of these in any detail in the contemporary urban milieu?

Drawing on the author’s three decades of working in African cities (in particular Maputo since 1980), and underpinned by recent research undertaken on urban land issues in Sub-Saharan Africa, this article argues for an approach to urban development that is based on understanding of both the realpolitik of the region as well as the mental models and organizational practices of so-called informal mechanisms. The normative analysis that underpins development approaches to urban physical and economic development (e.g. Devas, 2004) and the separate, largely descriptive, literature on African cities that celebrates socio-cultural reality (e.g. Simone 2004) are not enough. What is needed is an investigative approach that is firmly based on the parameters of contextual analysis as well as understanding ‘perceptions of the possible’. Thus, instead of investigating why African urban areas do not conform to essentially Northern norms, or indigenous rural ‘traditions’, we need to investigate with African urban dwellers how they continue to produce and adapt urban forms within their socio-cultural and political economic realities, and – importantly – consider how this might be realistically enhanced within specific and general contexts.

The main argument of the article is that urban land in Sub-Saharan Africa has been used primarily for elite group benefit from the pre-colonial period all through the colonial period, with different forms of control of access to underpin elite hegemony, many however being based on, or including, forms of social redistribution. In the post-colonial period controls of access to urban land were relaxed in practice although many ruling elites established an anti-urban bias in development, which is arguably just a different form of the same approach. In recent years mechanisms to control urban land access are currently being re-instated, which the article argues will primarily benefit elite groups, with this related to the interests of international capital as well as changing class structure.

As such, the growing competition for urban land is a key element of local political economies, yet remains deeply embedded within cultural and social systems. The assumptions and recent advocacy of titling as the basis for land markets to create wealth, which are increasingly espoused by international agencies, do not take into account the realpolitik and wider context and thus can serve to destabilise an already strained urban equilibrium as urbanisation gains pace across the macro-region. In this context, can a ‘rights-based approach’ be effectively conceptualised to promote wider benefits of urban citizenship?

The analysis in the original paper is applied to an in-depth historical and contemporary case study of Maputo city, capital of Mozambique, however space does not permit this to be transmitted in this short article, which thus focuses on the more contemporary general situation. It is also stressed that the work is seen as exploratory in that it raises questions as much as responds to these, and thus represents work in progress.

New initiatives in urban land control
As the Sub-Saharan macro-economy went through generally involuntary structural adjustment in the late 1980s and 1990s, arguably one of the few resources which could be predominantly controlled by national and local elites was land access. Together with rising demand for urban land, and de facto valuation of this through growing informal market mechanisms, this led firstly to increased land grabbing through the wide range of allocative mechanisms (‘traditional’, informal and formal) and later to the political desire to adjust the continuing adopted colonial legal situation to permit formalisation of market values. In countries with formally existing land markets, these legislative changes focused on establishing the exclusive access to land through formal titling, thus permitting the new landowning elite to consolidate their holdings. In countries with post-colonial state allocation systems and no formal land markets, this led to calls for privatisation of land, hotly contested by strong peasant lobbies, with the same general intention of creating and consolidating a landowning elite.

In both contexts, however, a growing force is the emerging middle class, largely excluded from past large scale land allocation, and wanting cheaper access to land, but as yet with limited political clout. This group have either had to accept limited access to state-provided housing, or also invest in the formal sites and services schemes (generally termed ‘downward-raiding’ as these were targeted officially at low income groups) or the informal sector, as the formal housing markets do not offer them affordable options. They have usually not benefited from the above land-grabbing process, and thus face more expensive access to urban land through the growing legal and other restrictions to informal supply as well as the significant reduction in formal state land development.

Despite the growing evidence from rural development sectors of the lack of success of titling programmes, which tend to dispossess the poorer rural population, recently there has been a major push from international agencies for titling of land as the basis for kick-starting development of capital. This has been to a greater or lesser extent enthusiastically endorsed by Sub-Saharan governments, ostensibly for its economic development potential. The rationale for titling is that with massive titling programmes the majority can access capital through mortgaging their land. However this is very unlikely as the financial system is weak in many countries in the region, and as such loans based on mortgaged land are unlikely to be forthcoming – especially for the majority who will be perceived as a high risk, high administrative cost lending portfolio. In addition there is limited funding available in domestic savings to fund long-term loans, and hence such loans would have high interest rates making them inaccessible, or unsustainable, for the majority.

Apart from the probable lack of financial supply, the titling programmes are likely to fail in any widespread way due to the generalised lack of institutional and technical capacity to undertake such programmes – i.e. replicate internationally funded pilot projects. Related to this is the lack of sound economic (fiscal) bases for wider programmes as urban elites resist land taxation and the urban poor cannot afford to pay, and the inadequate political will to exact taxation on land as well as enforce repossession on defaulted loans – partly due to these activities undermining the rich speculative opportunities in urban land of the elite. As such any titling programmes are likely to be limited in scope and unsustainable, effectively supporting the on-going process of consolidating urban land holdings. Arguably this is their real interest – that of consolidating a local capitalist sector within the elite, and in this the claim to kick-start capital formation may have some basis.

The current programmes of urban land titling are thus likely to have a limited impact – rather like the previous sites and service schemes – as they are being undertaken for realpolitik objectives which are different from those which are officially espoused. Competing claims to urban land will continue to exist between the political/economic elite, pushing for selective formalisation as part of a (relatively protected) capitalist market system (which is likely to slowly expand to include an emerging middle class) and the largely uncontrollable demands of the majority who will continue to act ‘informally’ – that is, outside the state and regulated market systems. This is inevitable as the next decades will see rapid and increased urbanisation, but probably still limited economic growth and distribution.

Growing demand and restrictions on supply (legal and access-related) have led to informal access to land becoming increasingly commoditised, including in secondary urban areas, which are the most likely to experience the next surge of urban growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. However given the marginal position of the macro-region in global economic terms, and the proportionally increasing poor majorities in urban areas, the widening of formal urban land development access in socio-economic terms is unlikely. As such informal access to land and/or housing (probably increasingly through rental) is likely to remain the predominant form of urban land access for the foreseeable future. In this scenario, how can competing claims for urban land continue to be resolved and what role can there be for proactive engagement within this on behalf of the less economically established majority, which is the ostensible target for ‘development’?

Reinforcing rights to the city
One of the tenets of more recent development approaches has been a rights-based approach. Such an approach to urban development is, however, fundamentally based on the precepts of liberal capitalist democracy – not the realpolitik of urban areas in Sub-Saharan Africa. African urban areas in many ways draw on norms and institutions derived from indigenous and often pre-capitalist socio-cultural orders, many of which survived under, at times subservient to, colonialism. In these, the now globally dominant ‘Western’ rationalities actually play a limited role. As such the basis for social relations may be more kinship and community-based than individualist or nuclear family-oriented; the basis for political relations may draw more on accepted authoritarianism or negotiated patronage than elected representation; and the basis for economic relations may draw more on principles of social redistribution or reciprocity than on utilitarian exchange.

Evidence for this exists in the urban land context, where what is considered socially and culturally legitimate is often not legal, and vice versa. Also, even though so-called ‘informal’ land markets operate commercially, i.e. using monetary exchange, these are often heavily modified by social relations (e.g. differential pricing and information exchange), and often rely on protection of ‘informal’ authorities (e.g. local ‘headmen’ and even ‘warlords’). In this less clear cut milieu, politicians also often have to present a different position from that in the formal institutional order, and often manipulate the situation to their own benefit and that of the formal economic elite with which they have close relationships. As such, these political ‘big men’ (and women) not only can be part of the formal order (e.g. get preferential loans from banks) but get free/cheap access to urban land both formally and informally as part of their consolidation process. They then use this largesse to further their power through informal redistribution and reciprocal arrangements. In this context there is little real interest in a formal ‘free and fair market’ developing, whether from the elite or the majority.

The pressure to democratise and decentralise is leading to a distinction between de jure and de facto governance and this is where a rights-based approach can fail. De jure governance is what is legally adopted, but often not acted on – due as much to weakness in legal and governance systems as political connivance. De facto governance is what maintains the system operational – often in the light of citizen non-engagement this is based on negotiated settlements between powerful elites, with a degree of populism to maintain wider support at key moments (e.g. elections). Arguably this hegemonic situation of regime dominance will only change with changes in wider urban power structures.

Such changes in power structures could potentially include the weakening of economic power of national elites due to the penetration of foreign capital and the undermining of the economic basis for current regimes, or the more severe alienation of the urban poor majority which leads to forms of political instability. However, current national elites are very careful about the terms on which they accept foreign capital in this area of reproduction, as opposed to the area of production, where it is largely accepted, and there is limited foreign direct investment in general, with even less being directed at urban development. There is also a fairly well developed sensitivity for the limits to alienation of the majority, and there are very small skilled working classes, most of which are unorganised. As such the growth of a middle class which asserts its rights, is perhaps the greatest challenge to the current renegotiation of rights to urban land.

Should proactive urban policy thus focus on widening the middle class and not the urban poor? Would titling of urban land assist this process? Or is it more important to secure rights to land for the majority – without expensive titling – and encourage, support and guide wider household residential investment? If the latter, how can this be politically championed in specific contexts? These are questions for debate which require specific contextualisation to be relevant – something there is not room for in this short article.

What is more to the point is the need to base urban development approaches on a sound analysis of the actual institutions which act in controlling access to, as well as use and transfer of, urban land. This has been the initial focus of a series of recent studies of urban land rights and management mechanisms by European and African researchers linked to the Network-Association of European Researchers into Urbanisation in the South, N-AERUS. These studies argue that the current conceptions of urban land use control are largely based on the legal and institutional forms imported during the colonial period, including survey, registry, use definitions, regulatory and fiscal instruments as well as forms of forward planning, but have been adapted to the contextual reality in ways that need to be understood and supported. This paper argues further that both the continuing ‘formal’ colonial heritage and the more recent manifestations of urban land reform are imbued with the traditions of capitalist modernity which have never been fully absorbed in the region, even in the late colonial or early neo-colonial periods. This is not to argue however that capitalism in its various forms (mercantile, state-led, ‘global’ etc.) has not impacted on the mental models and organisational forms that control of urban land is based on. On the contrary these are often adopted partially and adapted to indigenous forms, as is evidenced in the urban fabric itself of Sub-Saharan African cities and towns. Hence it is not just a question of how the ‘informal’ can be linked to the ‘formal’ but whether the concept of formal is useful at all.

What is clear is that within the marginal global position of the macro-region, the current phase of rapid urbanisation will manifest itself in different forms, contextually distinct. To be more effective in facing such issues, urban studies arguably need to base their approaches on a better understanding of the actual form of urbanism which emerges within these broad parameters and – rather than continue to adapt imported normative models – seek to develop responses which are embedded within the real political, economic, social and cultural milieus. This requires a ‘new way of seeing’ that transcends the current disciplinary boundaries of urban studies, and which a variety of African urbanists are beginning to investigate (e.g. Enwezor et al). This, however, needs to be investigated not only in academic circles, but on the ground with urban governing elites, emerging/growing middle classes, and the wider urban majority, in a move to a collective understanding of ‘perceptions of the possible’.


Selected reading
CEHS/DW, Terra. Urban land reform in post-war Angola: Research, advocacy and policy development. Development Workshop Occasional Paper no. 5 (available from CEHS as book).

Devas, N., Urban governance, voice and poverty in the developing world. London: Earthscan, 2004.

Durand-Lasserve, A. and L. Royston, Holding their ground: Secure land tenure for the urban poor in developing countries. London: Earthscan, 2002.

Enwezor, E.K.O. et al, Under siege: Four African cities, Documenta 11_ Platform 4, Kaseel, 2002.

Home, R. and H. Lim, Demystifying the mystery of capital: Land tenure and poverty in Africa and the Caribbean. Glasshouse Press, 2004.

International Development Department at the University of Birmingham (IDD), IDD Policy Briefs nos 1–6 on informal land delivery processes in various cities. IDD, 2005. Available at www.idd.bham.ac.uk.

Jenkins, P., ‘Querying the concepts of formal and informal in land access in developing world – case of Maputo’. In Vaa and Hansen (eds) The Formal and Informal City – what happens at the Interface. Uppsala: the Nordic Africa Institute, 2004.

Jenkins. P. and P. Wilkinson, ‘Assessing the growing impact of the global economy on urban development in South African cities: Case studies of Maputo and Cape Town’. In Cities Journal, vol 19/1, 2002.

Jenkins, P., H. Smith and Y.P. Wang, Planning and housing in the rapidly urbanising world. Oxford: Routledge, forthcoming.

Kironde, J.M.L., Current changes in customary/traditional land delivery systems in sub-Saharan African cities: The case of Dar es Salaam city. 2005.

Kombe, W.J. and V. Kreibach, Informal land management in Tanzania. Spring Research Series no. 29, 2000.

Kreibach, V. and W.A.H. Olima, Urban land management in Africa. Spring Research Series no. 40, 2002.

McAuslan, P., ‘Bringing the law back’. In Essays in land, law and development. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003.

Obala, L. and N. Kinyungu, Current changes in customary/traditional land delivery systems in sub-Saharan African cities – case study of Nairobi. 2005.

Payne, G., Land, rights and innovation: Improving tenure security for the urban poor. ITDG Publications, 2002.

Precht, R., La nouvelle coutume urbaine evolution comparée des filières coutumières de la gestion foncière urbaine dans les pays d’Afrique sub-Saharienne. 2005.

Simone, A., For the city yet to come: Changing African life in four cities. London: Duke University Press, 2004.