Access, Decentralisation and Local Governance of Land in Africa: The Implementation of Tanzania’s New Wave Land Reform

This dissertation is about the implementation of the new wave land reforms, which have been introduced in a large number of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa the last couple of decades. The reforms are characterised by their recognition of existing rights to land, customary rights included, decentralization of responsibility and the facilitation of registration and land titling. Overall they aim at streamlining land administration and land dispute settlement practices. Though highly controversial and much debated not much is known about the reforms’ implementation and institutional impact.

Through comparative case research in two rural areas in mainland Tanzania the project sets out to investigate the implementation of a new wave land reform. Methodologically, it suggests combining the implementation study approach, which helps focusing on the establishment of administrative procedures and institutions and the role of different actors, with the access concept’s more critical focus on local level user perspectives’ on reform. Overall, it asks whether Tanzania’s reform – as intended – has managed to establish more formal land administration and land dispute settlement structures.

The dissertation concludes that a number of actors influence implementation and that a priori assumptions about where decisions about a new wave land reform are made, should be avoided. Overall, actors are only semi-independent - and semi-decisive. Therefore, coordination of institutions engaged in implementation is important to avoid administrative decoupling.
Despite being slow, uneven and often project-driven, there are examples of successful interventions to implement Tanzania’s new wave land reform. The reform systemically contributes to changing the configuration of institutions at the local level. The more formal institutions – those characterized by some regularity and which have the backing of the state – become more important in mediating access to land. The change is reinforced by a demand from below for land services caused by an increased competition for land. In fact, the latter is crucial for the institutionalization of change. This helps explain why land dispute settlement is better functioning than land administration; land dispute settlement is in bigger demand.

Overall, the dissertation concludes that land administration and land dispute settlement institutions are becoming more formal. But the introduction of a new wave land reform feeds into ongoing changes. It does not herald a revolution. Changes are gradual and customary and informal institutions persist. It is the relative strength of the institutions that is likely to change due to reform. Because the more formal institutions are strengthened, access to these institutions and the services they may provide become more important, also for those groups whose access to land hitherto relied on customary practices.

Analytically, the dissertation’s findings call for a redefinition of the concept of access, which pays more attention to the interrelationship between actors, from the local to the global. The redefinition should also take into account the increasing demand from below for more formal land services. However, context matters. The implementation of a new wave land reform may reverse in case of instability. Policy wise, the dissertation highlights the importance of support to local level priorities and local level institutions, in particular at the village level. If the issuance of customary certificates of ownership remains a priority for state authorities they should be the end-result, not the point of departure, of implementation activities. The new inequalities due to reform should also be addressed.