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2021 | Book

Land, Law and African Land Governance: Introduction Read chapter Read first chapter

Land Issues for Urban Governance in Sub-Saharan Africa

Editor: Dr. Robert Home

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Book Series : Local and Urban Governance

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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About this book

Sub-Saharan Africa faces many development challenges, such as its size and diversity, rapid urban population growth, history of colonial exploitation, fragile states and conflicts over land and natural resources. This collection, contributed from different academic disciplines and professions, seeks to support the UN Habitat New Urban Agenda passed at Habitat III in Quito, Ecuador, in 2016. It will attract readers from urban specialisms in law, geography and other social sciences, and from professionals and policy-makers concerned with land use planning, surveying and governance.

Among the topics addressed by the book are challenges to governance institutions: how international development is delivered, building land management capacity, funding for urban infrastructure, land-based finance, ineffective planning regulation, and the role of alternatives to courts in resolving boundary and other land disputes. Issues of rights and land titling are explored from perspectives of human rights law (the right to development, and women's rights of access to land), and land tenure regularization. Particular challenges of housing, planning and informality are addressed through contributions on international real estate investment, community participation in urban settlement upgrading, housing delivery as a partly failing project to remedy apartheid's legacy, and complex interactions between political power, money and land. Infrastructure challenges are approached in studies of food security and food systems, urban resilience against natural and man-made disasters, and informal public transport.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. Land, Law and African Land Governance: Introduction
Abstract
This collection of essays is one in a series of books on local and urban governance, bringing together scholarship from different disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. It is aimed at readers from urban specialisms in law, geography and other social sciences and professionals and policymakers concerned with land-use planning, surveying and governance. Urban land governance has arisen recently as a policy concern influencing, practices, discourses and institutions in the area. A narrative or genealogy is presented of when and how the concept came about, involving complex policy developments at international, regional and national levels. The case of the African continent, particularly sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), is discussed, having acquired importance because of its particular history and growth rates of both population and urbanisation. The chapter contributions in this book are then outlined and how they contribute to evolving ideas on urban land governance.
Robert Home
Chapter 2. The Quest for “Good Governance” of Urban Land in Sub-Saharan Africa: Insight into Windhoek, Namibia
Abstract
There is an increasing demand for good urban governance by city residents all over sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This chapter traces the historical background of land issues in the region in response to the growing quest for “good governance” in urban land affairs. It critiques current and past urban governance approaches in past decades and synthesises the main objectives of the SDGs and the NUA to propose a good governance approach to land issues in sub-Saharan cities. A case study of land-related governance issues in Windhoek (Namibia) suggests how a good governance approach can be applied and advocates city autonomy in managing challenges. Local self-governance of cities (with less interference from national and regional governments) would allow city administrators and their residents to develop visions and implement activities to fulfil the specific needs of their city through land-based methods.
Uchendu Eugene Chigbu
Chapter 3. Financing African Cities: A Fiscal Lens on Urban Governance
Abstract
Understanding how African cities are governed requires a close look at how they are financed. From a fiscal and financial perspective, the chapter makes several important contributions to our understanding of urban governance in Africa. First, it shows that understanding public finance, in particular revenue, expenditures, and borrowing, is key to understanding urban governance. The design of sub-national fiscal systems, and the ways in which these systems are put into practice, shape how cities are governed, with direct implications for the daily operations and ongoing sustainability of urban areas. Second, the chapter argues that African cities require more dynamic financial tools, mobilising flexible, just and locally empowering sources of revenue. Land-based financing is a good place to begin to improve the revenue streams of city authorities, but must be accompanied by more creative expenditure models, to contend with the limitations of large-scale networked infrastructure and the potential for more hybrid approaches to service delivery.
Liza Rose Cirolia
Chapter 4. Urban Governance Through Religious Authority in Touba, Senegal
Abstract
Based on the study of the holy city of Touba in Senegal, this chapter demonstrates how the autonomous management of urbanisation by a religious institution can produce a city which provides affordable housing and basic civic amenities to its residents. Touba is the spiritual capital of the Muridiyya Sufi order, which administers it largely independently of state agencies with a distinctly noncapitalist land management system. Rather than being based on private property, real estate markets, financial institutions and debt, which is the norm for city building today, this system is founded on traditional, precolonial legal practices and on Sufi socioreligious concepts. This Sufi system of land management was first developed for the purpose of agricultural homesteading in the 1880s and since the 1970s has facilitated mass urbanisation.
Eric Ross, Cheikh Guèye
Chapter 5. The Right to the City and South African Jurisprudence
Abstract
This chapter explores the nexus between human rights and the right to the city. Although not formally enshrined in core international human rights instruments, the right to the city is developed by the doctrine, global organisations and activists and has cascaded down into the World Charter on the right to the city as well as few regional and national human rights and policy instruments. The chapter found that the right to the city is a composite right made of civil and political rights as well as socio-economic rights assembled together for the wellbeing of urban dwellers. The chapter draws from the South African jurisprudence to demonstrate that the right to the city can be protected through the right to housing, with strong attention to the need of the very poor and most vulnerable. It also found that ensuring the meaningful engagement of urban dwellers in the urbanisation processes is essential to equip the process with a human face. Failure to consider the interrelatedness of human rights elements of the right to housing will not lead to the enjoyment of the right to the city. The chapter also discusses the role of local government in the fulfilment of the right to the city, and argues that local government is at the centre of the implementation of the right to the city.
Serges Djoyou Kamga
Chapter 6. Urban Landownership and the Right to Sustainable Development for Women in Africa
Abstract
This chapter explores urban landownership in relation to the right to sustainable development granted by law to all the women of Africa. Although Africa is becoming more and more urbanised, its women are largely still relegated to remote rural areas and excluded from the benefits of urban life, which seems to imply that they are ordained exclusively for rural livelihood. Local governance provides an important institutionalised framework within which to address the question of land rights for women, The principle of “no one is left behind” and SDG 11 highlight the need for the inclusive participation of women in urban governance and development planning. While women are the cornerstone for development in Africa, they continue to endure development injustices due to their subjugated status under the dominant cultural and societal norms in African societies. The Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol), adopted in 2003 provides in Article 19(c) to “promote women’s access to and control over productive resources such as land and guarantee their right to property”, and this chapter seeks to determine how the entitlement to sustainable development could effectively be guaranteed to the women of Africa.
Carol C. Ngang
Chapter 7. Effectiveness of Planning Law in Sub-Saharan Africa
Abstract
Physical planning policy and its wider parent field of urban development have evolved over 100–150 years. They are dynamic and creative fields with a plethora of theories and solutions on offer, as reflected in the objectives of the SDGs and the ways forward proposed by the NUA. In contrast, planning law, built on conservative models, has been mostly static in its basic approaches and appears to have a limited effect in translating urban development policy into tangible outcomes in sub-Saharan African cities. There is a perception that this is because planning law is “poorly implemented”, but there is often little or no questioning of the legal framework within the local and urban governance systems in SSA. This chapter explores the implementation of planning law in a sample of 18 African cities, and proposes a demonstrable need for fresh models of planning law that can be more effective in delivering the potential of planning and sustainable development policy in alleviating poverty.
Anne Amin, Robert Lewis-Lettington, Samuel Njuguna
Chapter 8. Twenty Years of Building Capacity in Land Management, Land Tenure and Urban Land Governance
Abstract
Being the basis of economy in most of African territory, land is subject of conflict in the increasing demand for food, fuel, dwellings and natural resources. In this continuous struggle, governance plays a major role in decision-making regarding the use of and access to land, for which capacity development is crucial among practitioners.
This chapter presents the 20-year based experience of the international master’s programme in Land Management and Land Tenure from the Technical University of Munich and its transition to Land Management and Geospatial Science, together with the research model ADLAND “Advancing Collaborative Research in Responsible and Smart Land Management in and for Africa”, a project designed to support academic training in selected African universities, committed in developing and sharing skills, tools, knowledge, data and resources across Africa based on the framework of Responsible Land Management.
Walter Timo de Vries, Uchendu Eugene Chigbu, Pamela Duran-Diaz
Chapter 9. Stocktaking Participatory and Inclusive Land Readjustment in Africa
Abstract
The rapid growth of African cities has posed major challenges in the provision of adequate housing, public infrastructure and services as central and urban local governments have lacked the financial and institutional capacity to support urban expansion. Against the background of these challenges, in 2010 Participatory and Inclusive Land Readjustment was introduced as a tool for enhancing sustainable urban development through enabling stakeholder participation and inclusiveness in decision-making. About a decade later, this study assesses the progress of Participatory and Inclusive Land Readjustment in Africa so as to derive lessons from country experiences. A mixture of desk review and case study approaches was employed. The study found that Participatory and Inclusive Land Readjustment has potential in two respects. First, it is an appropriate land development tool for dealing with urban expansion and regeneration problems. Second, it can be used to narrow the gap between governments’ centralised control approaches and the existing reality of people’s needs and demands. Implementation in the African context has faced challenges that can be addressed through refinement of the tool to, among other things, consider community knowledge, expert opinion and city needs.
Charles Chavunduka, Kudakwashe Chikuku, Marcyline Chivenge
Chapter 10. Governance Challenges in African Urban Fantasies
Abstract
Satellite settlements are recently booming around major African cities, often as comprehensively planned and self-contained new towns. These large-scale projects are influenced by the visions of global, smart, and sustainable cities, and are funded largely through international real estate investments aimed at the middle- and upper-income markets. A research issue left largely unanswered is the lack of clarity about the place of such “African urban fantasies” within the governance structures of the countries where they are situated, including decision-making, public participation, accountability, transparency, environmental sustainability, and equity. This chapter reviews the governance structure for such megaprojects, and how it undermines the social inclusiveness goal of contemporary global development agendas. The chapter concludes with key lessons that we can take from these new towns towards a more appropriate and inclusive governance structure.
Ismaila Rimi Abubakar
Chapter 11. Land Conflicts and Alternative Dispute Resolution in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Case of Botswana
Abstract
Because of increasing population, rapid urban urbanisation, socio-economic transformations, changes in land values and other factors, most countries in sub-Saharan Africa experience land conflicts. Until a few years ago, litigation and, to a lesser extent, administrative interventions were the preferred ways of resolving land-related conflicts in urban and peri-urban areas. However, litigations and administrative interventions have been criticised as costly, time-consuming, inequitable and unjust to the poor, vulnerable and minority groups. To decrease pressure on legal systems as well as improve access and justice for all, some countries (including Botswana) have introduced Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) mechanisms to complement court processes. Taking Botswana as a case study, this chapter assesses how far ADR has reduced court cases, dispensed justice, improved urban governance and promoted or restored peaceful relationships in land-related conflicts. The chapter reveals critical flaws and limitations in trust and impartiality because the Land Tribunal is viewed as a state agent and a common law court. The chapter makes recommendations on principles for a just and effective alternative land dispute resolution system.
Faustin Tirwirukwa Kalabamu
Chapter 12. Post-apartheid Housing Delivery as a (Failed) Project of Remediation
Abstract
Apartheid was a regime of socio-spatial relegation: racialised populations were banished to South Africa’s urban peripheries and rural hinterlands. In the post-apartheid period, the ruling ANC framed its democratisation project as remedial, a corrective to centuries of dispossession. This entailed government providing the physical infrastructure required for black South Africans to return to cities, not as precarious squatters on the urban fringe, but as residents with an equal right to the city. Yet, more than a quarter century later, little progress has been made in any substantive sense. While South Africa has delivered more free, formal housing units than any other modern democracy, it has consistently failed to coordinate this programme with employment, transportation, and food security initiatives. This has left residents with homes to be sure, but typically delivered to locations where residents already live, rendering the geography of apartheid permanent. This chapter also accounts for the substandard quality of the units delivered; the slow pace of delivery; and the fact that the housing backlog continues to grow despite the ongoing provision of homes. It concludes with an analysis of the exclusionary effects of the government’s equation of housing delivery with democratisation tout court.
Zachary Levenson
Chapter 13. Women, Land and Urban Governance in Colonial and Post-colonial Zimbabwe
Abstract
The urban landscape in Zimbabwe is a site for continuous gender and political struggles. Since the time of British imperial conquest, laws and policies to govern territories were crafted to conform to particular notions of modernity on one hand, and certain notions of patriarchal traditions on the other, intended to produce and reproduce particular urban orders (or disorders). In that regard, access to urban land, its ownership and land-use patterns have sidelined different categories of women. Seemingly progressive socialist urban agendas by the post-colonial state around the 1980s did little to open urban land ownership to women. The neoliberal reforms of the 1990s, though at times accompanied by some equity concerns, did not stretch much beyond tokenism; hence most low-income black women found themselves in worse predicaments. The fast track land reform opened peri-urban landscapes to black people, but did not shape the urban land discourse in terms of intersectional gender struggles and needs. The present-day Zimbabwean urban landscapes, though accommodative to various social groups, are mostly corrupted by land barons, administered by gender blind urban planners and, centrally, governed by an intersection of political, neo-liberal and patriarchal interests. In such a context, women’s access to and ownership of land remain problematic.
Sandra Bhatasara
Chapter 14. Urban Land Governance and Corruption in Africa
Abstract
Urban land provides spaces for understanding the intersection of politics, money and corruption in post-colonial Africa. This chapter traces the political economy of accumulation in which political power is used by various actors to claim a stake in lucrative urban land markets. Urban land in Africa is a lucrative economic and thus political asset, and increased demand for urban land across the continent has been driven by multiple factors, including high rates of urbanisation, increased rural–urban migration, urban population growth and serious challenges in housing provision. This chapter uses desk research to map out the actors and contestations over land, using case studies from SSA to show how an intricate mix of political power and money creates multiple illicit land deals and often shadow land markets in which politicians and politically connected individuals use land as an economic and political asset. The political complexities involved in land corruption make difficult to combat the problem. Politicians and bureaucrats with responsibility to fight corruption are entangled in the web of corrupt dealings which make it difficult to end the problem. The chapter offers suggestions to improve urban land systems.
Manase Kudzai Chiweshe
Chapter 15. Partnerships for Successes in Slum Upgrading: Local Governance and Social Change in Kibera, Nairobi
Abstract
With global trends towards increased urbanisation, conditions in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) present unique challenges. Kibera, in Nairobi, Kenya, is among the largest informal settlements in SSA, and has been part of ambitious programs to improve quality-of-life conditions for residents. This chapter explores one initiative involving a partnership of the Kenyan Government, UN-Habitat, a local NGO called Maji na Ufanisi, and community-based leadership groups. The program was part of a slum upgrading initiative called the Soweto East Project and relied heavily on community engagement to build trust, encourage active participation and define community concerns. Priorities included water supply, sanitation and waste management, but also an access road, a community resource centre and capacity building activities. We describe the mechanisms used to cultivate community engagement, the problems that emerged and the successes that followed. We conclude that environmentally sustainable and socially acceptable enhancements in informal settlements will require both a strong commitment from within the community and sustained support from outside institutions. The innovations that were a part of this program provide evidence of strategies that yield positive outcomes.
Thomas Meredith, Melanie MacDonald, Harrison Kwach, Esther Waikuru, Graham Alabaster
Chapter 16. Urban Resilience as an Option for Achieving Urban Sustainability in Africa
Abstract
Global commitments reflected in the UN SDGs, the NUA and the Africa Urban Agenda 2063 bring to the fore the challenges facing twenty-first century cities in their sustainable development efforts, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Yet are African cities prepared to respond to global shocks and stresses? Do African cities consider resilience principles in their urban governance and planning efforts? What are the issues arising from urban governance? Using Ghana as a case study, this chapter examines changing approaches to urban resilience and the planning and management experience. Consideration of the resilience philosophy in Ghana’s urban governance is limited as compared to developed and other developing countries because of: limited planning and management agency capacity in implementing resilience principles; rapid urbanisation contributing to unplanned and informal settlements; and severe impacts of climate change. The forces of rapid urbanisation and climate change constitute the main threat to urban sustainability in Ghana, magnified by the weak urban planning and management regimes within the fragile and evolving local urban governance system. Policy considerations are discussed concerning urban resilience in twenty-first century SSA.
Patrick Brandful Cobbinah
Chapter 17. Food Security, Urban Governance and Multilevel Government in Africa
Abstract
Realising the right to food requires more than an increase in food production. Increasing access to food is equally important, so this contribution adopts a “food systems approach”. Against the backdrop of a growing number of countries on the continent that are decentralising powers to cities and regions, this chapter assesses the role of local governments in South Africa with respect to food security. It argues that food security is not just a national and/or provincial government concern, but that the Constitution demands of municipalities to contribute to realising the right to food. Against the backdrop of a general introduction into the division of responsibilities between national, provincial and local government, it deploys two arguments to make this assertion. The first is located in the jurisprudence of the South African Constitutional Court on socio-economic rights. The second is located in the division of powers between national, provincial and local government. This contribution explores various linkages between a municipality’s constitutional powers and food security. Specific emphasis is placed on the municipality’s responsibility to regulate trade and markets as well as its responsibility to conduct spatial planning and land-use management. The argument made in this chapter is also relevant in other countries on the continent that combine socio-economic rights with multilevel government arrangements.
Jaap de Visser
Chapter 18. Resilience of Informal Public Transport and Urban Land Governance in Ibadan, Nigeria
Abstract
Informal public transport (IPT) has emerged as an adaptive alternative to formal public transport in developing countries. Transport sytems are an integral part of land allocation and urban governance in urban development, with positive and negative impacts upon the wellbeing of urban dwellers. A pragmatic theoretical approach to the role of informal transport in Ibadan, Nigeria, helps to position the significance of stakeholder perceptions to policies on land and urban governance in cities of the developing world. This approach has more significance given the diminishing public sector investment in public transport in developing countries that has led to the growth of informal transport. Pragmatism encourages the perceived negative role of informal transport becoming more positive, informed by the stakeholder views involved in IPT in Ibadan. This chapter argues that the stakeholder perceptions of IPT reflect the real world situation, to allow a shift towards seeing IPT as essential for achieving urban wellbeing for citizens of developing country cities.
Dumiso Moyo, Adebola Olowosegun
Chapter 19. Urban Governance and Disease Outbreaks: Cholera in Harare and Ebola in Monrovia
Abstract
Both the cholera outbreak in Harare (2008–2009) and the Ebola outbreak in Monrovia (2014–2016) spread rapidly through informal settlements that make up much of the urban fabric of these two cities. These outbreaks occurred in the context of increasing precarity of the urban poor, resulting from forced displacement, and provoked by contestation over economically and politically strategic urban spaces. Despite this, only in Harare has the disease outbreak been linked to urban governance, while the Ebola outbreak in Monrovia has yet to be conceptualised with reference to urban governance. This chapter argues that the origin of the disease itself, differences in local government structures, and the framing of the outbreak by the international community all shaped how urban governance has been considered in these two outbreaks. The chapter draws attention to how urban policies shape disease outbreaks, regardless of whether such outbreaks are explicitly politicised.
Hillary Birch
Chapter 20. African Urban History, Place-Naming and Place-Making
Abstract
African urban history can contribute towards understanding present-day land governance issues of SSA cities, through a post-disciplinary approach across disciplinary and sub-disciplinary boundaries. The chapter explores precolonial and colonial building forms, and the impact of colonial policies towards towns or townships, which discouraged Africans from urban living. Banished to peri-urban settlements, they lived in temporary structures, often under threat of demolition and displacement. A sense of place identity and attachment is difficult in such circumstances, but place-naming and community histories can help build local civil society so that better rules for land governance, both formal and informal, can be negotiated.
Robert Home
Chapter 21. Should Monrovian Communities Agree to Voluntary Slum Relocations: Land, Gender and Urban Governance
Abstract
Slum-dwellers in Monrovia, Liberia, facing extreme environmental hazards and flooding are being advised by the National Housing Authority (NHA) to relocate, but the process and outcome is unclear. The slum-dwellers are vulnerable owing to their location, risks and socio-economic profile given prolonged civil war, the tenuous return to democracy and an Ebola health epidemic in one of the poorest economies of Africa. This chapter analyses the multi-stakeholder endeavour to develop voluntary gender-responsive relocation guidelines, while addressing issues such as land, livelihoods, financing and urban services in a relocation package. The chapter explores how good urban governance is a requirement for a successful community-led and human rights-based sustainable slum resettlement.
M. Siraj Sait
Chapter 22. Where Next?
Abstract
This final chapter explores the future for African urban land governance in the 2020s ‘decade of action’ on the UN’s SDGs, which, as ‘soft law’, depend upon the commitment of its nation states for their achievement. Of all continents Africa has the greatest number and diversity of nation states, whose sovereignty and sovereign equality is protected by the AU’s constitutive act, but the toxic colonial legacy creates asymmetric power relations between state and citizens. Progress towards the SDGs requires effective urban land governance, yet desirable law reforms may not be implemented, and a widening of stakeholder involvement is needed at sub-national level through both traditional and decentralised authorities. Material progress on the ground is increasingly driven by local communities' formal and informal arrangements, innovation and knowledge-sharing across borders.
Robert Home
Metadata
Title
Land Issues for Urban Governance in Sub-Saharan Africa
Editor
Dr. Robert Home
Copyright Year
2021
Electronic ISBN
978-3-030-52504-0
Print ISBN
978-3-030-52503-3
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52504-0