TENURE SECURITY AND EXCLUSION PROCESSES IN WEST AFRICAN CITIES 163
its name (immatriculation);10 (2) the state allocates land using a Torrens
system—the “top-down” administrative creation of private landownership
following the “purging” of customary land rights11—and then establishes a
“civil register” of land in the form of the livre foncier (Comby and Gerber
2007; Ouedraogo 2011), where landownership titles (titres fonciers, or TFs)
and their transactions are centrally registered; (3) transactions of titled land
(land with ownership rights) take place within the framework of the civil
code; and (4) use rights and their transactions are recorded in registers,
usually kept at local levels.12
Experts unanimously agree that this system is a failure. All coun-
tries of the subregion proved unable to deliver and register land titles
at scale. The existing registration system cannot be instituted everywhere
and can hardly be updated. A century after it was introduced, less than
5 percent of all land is reported as registered in sub-Saharan Africa13—
this figure includes state-owned land.14 Its coexistence with customary
rights and precarious titles gives rise to competing land markets with
different levels of legitimacy, legality, tenure security, and prices. More-
over, it opens doors to corruption in land administration and—for this
very reason—can hardly be reformed or improved. The urban poor are
extremely vulnerable in this context.
This system contrasts strongly with customary land “ownership,”
which refers to the communal possession of rights to use and allocate
agricultural and grazing land by a group sharing the same cultural identity.
This customary land “ownership” existed before colonization. It is still pre-
dominant in rural areas, peri-urban areas of cities and, to a lesser extent,
in urbanized areas. A single person usually administers on behalf of the
group. Decisions—made in principle on a consensual basis—must com-
ply with the cultural tradition of the community concerned. The extent
of any rights to use the land depends on the agreement made between
the customary community and the person receiving the rights. Within
the group, social institutions defend or protect these rights against other
claims regarding the land.
Recent empirical observations in the periphery of African cities sug-
gest that the transfer of customary land is governed by a combination of
informal practices, reinterpreted customary norms, and market economy
rules (Rakodi and Leduka 2004; Durand-Lasserve 2005; Werhmann 2008).
Recognition of customary rights in the subregion applies more in
rural areas than in urban or peri-urban areas. The right of customary hold-
ers to subdivide and sell land is recognized in Togo and to a lesser extent