The LIDN Weekly Roundup #62
This weeks’ Economist has a fascinating spread about perhaps the most on the face of it dull yet oh so important development issue — land.
Basically, millions of people around the world are living and working on land they own, but cannot prove they own. “90% of rural land in Africa is not formally documented. Just 4% of African cities have mapped and titled the private land in their capital cities.”
This leads to what Hernando de Soto termed, “dead capital”. People cannot use their land to raise capital to improve their livelihoods or expand businesses. They cannot rent it out to others while they’re away, thereby discouraging rural-urban migration. And they are constantly in fear of being evicted.
New research by Prindex, a research consortium looking at property rights, has summarized results from 140 countries. finding huge amounts of tenure insecurity in poor countries.
So what to do about this. The article talks about some initiatives by various countries and the World Bank to improve titling and registration, but such top-down efforts are problematic.
Instead we need to focus on incentives (who doesn’t want this to happen?) and mobilize people from the bottom-up. Such systems could build upon traditional and customary land titling, rather than forcing a Western perspective.
Want to read more?
- Pick up a copy of the Economist — there’s *so* much more in there.
- Play around with the Prindex data. It’s fun and really highlights why such a “boring” topic is so important.
- Does titling actually improve tenure security? Report by Prindex.
- Explore the impacts of land titling on development, in this article by the World Bank.
- How does land titling impact legal empowerment? Great piece by Catherine Boone (LSE).
- Finally, what role do local institutions play? Explore this useful piece by Camilla Toulmin (IIED).
