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Improving tenure security for the poor in Africa: Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda - Case Study

Formalization and its prospects

Year of publication 2006

Pages 31 p.

Author Odhiambo, M.O.;Land and Water Division

Publisher FAO ;

Product type Document

Edition 1

Synopsis (short abstract) This paper identifies the key issues of land tenure security for the rural poor, vulnerable and marginalized in the East African countries of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The report finds that most of these issues are common across the three countries, both in terms of the challenges that the communities face and imperatives that inform policy interventions and responses. In all three countries, customary and statutory systems operate side by side and, in all three, there is a tendency for policy and legislative frameworks to privilege the modern systems of property relations over traditional ones, even as national rhetoric indicates recognition and support for the latter. The paper concludes that formalization has not always benefited the rural poor. Instead, an elite minority has tended to benefit from reforms while the majority of the poor and vulnerable end up worse off as institutions and systems that supported their livelihoods and gave them a sense of security are marginalized and replaced by modern institutions.

Language English

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    Most of the world’s poor work in the “informal economy” – outside of recognized and enforceable rules. Thus, even though most have assets of some kind, they have no way to document their possessions because they lack formal access to legally recognized tools such as deeds, contracts and permits. FAO, with donor funding from Norway, has undertaken a set of activities for “Improving tenure security of the rural poor” in order to meet the needs of FAO member countries and, in turn, support the C ommission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor (CLEP) – the first global anti-poverty initiative focusing on the link between exclusion, poverty and law, looking for practical solutions to the challenges of poverty, aiming to make legal protection and economic opportunity the right of all, not the privilege of the few. This paper aims to suggest answers to this penetrating question about land tenure and the poor in Africa: Why, when so much is known and so much seems to be done, does so little change? For this purpose, a framework has been developed that can be used to prioritize and explore the issues within a coherent and recognizable context that provides a practical as well as theoretical perspective.
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