2024-02-14 16:49:35
In West Africa and Madagascar, the governance of rural territories is marked by decentralization reforms anchored in historical, political and legal contexts and processes that have influenced the trajectories of land policies.
At the end of Independence, land legislation is still mainly influenced by the colonial heritage and the land registration system. This system of recognition of private property rights by the central State, which registers land titles in the land register, was a source of exclusion: it served above all the interests of the settlers and only recognized rights over land to the holder of securities. It is the opposite of traditional conceptions of land, which are based on a social desire to include and allow everyone to have access to land and its resources to improve the living conditions of their people. family.
The reforms undertaken since the 1990s have attempted to reconcile legitimacy (local systems of social recognition of rights resulting from custom which are continually evolving to adapt to new situations) and legality (State law). To do this, they relied on decentralization processes in order to bring decision-making centers closer to territorial stakeholders. A certain number of prerogatives have thus been transferred to local authorities and communities to ensure the provision of local services in terms of recognition and security of land rights.
If the trajectories followed by the different countries are diverse, there are nevertheless common constraints and difficulties which hinder the missions assigned to local authorities and the construction of their legitimacy vis-à-vis other local actors. Local land management is made even more complex with the rise in tensions and the amplification of socio-political and security crises in the Sahel.
The establishment of rural communes in decentralization processes has often been achieved without clarification of the land issue and municipal boundaries. In rural areas, in Mali, Burkina Faso and even Senegal, the emphasis has only been placed on the census of the villages making up the territorial community. This cautious attitude was undoubtedly linked to the fear that such clarification would trigger a process of disputes with the consequence of a weakening of social cohesion between neighboring municipalities.
In addition to these constraints, there are still other difficulties which hinder the exercise of the missions assigned to local authorities. Among them, the weakness of resources or the lack of transparency in the management of local affairs and the inability of the territorial administration to ensure the coordination of government action at the decentralized level.
Building the land legitimacy of local authorities
Whatever the approach adopted, decentralization policies have highlighted the problem of building the land legitimacy of local authorities vis-à-vis village and inter-village entities. These local customary governance bodies continue to play an important role in the management of natural resources and in particular collective lands. The development of local capacities for dialogue and negotiation has become essential in contexts where the same space is used for multiple uses: agriculture, livestock breeding, fishing, gathering, etc. This diversity of needs and interests underpins the multiplicity of access and use rights which stack up and which customary institutions seek to regulate, to take into account the needs and interests of all users of natural resources. .
From the point of view of grassroots communities, the attribution of significant prerogatives in terms of land management to local authorities constitutes in fact a measure of distance from the place of decision in relation to local users of rural areas. The introduction of a new institutional actor capable of establishing an unequal balance of power to the detriment of customary authorities can therefore sometimes be perceived as a threat. This is particularly the case when municipal councils allocate land rights over large areas to private operators, without local communities having been consulted and being able to collectively define the conditions under which such operations could be envisaged. .
The characteristics inherent to situations of institutional pluralism and the complexity of the game of actors in the land system therefore require adopting a nuanced approach in contexts where the “logics of sedimentation” or “stacking” institutions, norms and rules carry constraints, linked to the arbitrary behavior of certain local elites and the changes which affect customary institutions.
The new responsibilities of communities can, however, sometimes be transformed into assets. Particularly with the construction of negotiation strategies aimed at finding agreement on land rules and procedures, as well as on stable forms of coordination. They in fact respond to a certain erosion of the legitimacy of customary authorities. This can be attributable to the supposed or proven bias of these institutions in favor of land speculators, and to the existence of corrupt practices often denounced by rural producers. Or again, to the propensity of certain customary institutions to play the game of the State due to political affiliation, instead of defending the interests of their communities. The weakening of intergenerational ties is another reason for this erosion, in a context where the reduction in lineage land reserves – raising concerns for the future of young rural people – is aggravated by the emergence of formal and informal land markets. In certain highly coveted areas such as peri-urban areas, collusions between customary authorities and land administration services are strongly denounced, as was the case for example during the national debates organized within the framework of the States General of land which were held in Guinea.
On another level, local land governance authorities are challenged by the challenge posed by the increased and conflicting competition between actors for the control and exploitation of land. This situation explains the interest that many countries place in the formalization of access to land and land transactions, mainly in areas where pressure on land is maintained by the growth of land markets: peri-urban areas, territories with potential. high, etc. Like the reform undertaken in Madagascar since 2005, legal innovations are then possible to offer “land certificates” which are much more accessible than land titles, and can be useful when the terms of recognition of agreements signed under signature private (“small papers”) do not seem sufficient. They indeed offer official methods of recognition of local rights via land services housed within municipalities which can be useful when a need for increased land security is perceived: this may be the case when repurchasing land, to secure land. the inheritance of widows who fear that the land they exploited will be taken over by their in-laws, etc.
Access to land, a major determinant of the security crisis in the central Sahel zone
The land issue alone is not enough to explain the rise in violence in the territories impacted by the sociopolitical and security crisis which today affects Mali, Niger and Burkina and threatens coastal countries. But it explains it in part, by being an object source of different legitimacies, where major productive, territorial, political and identity dimensions crystallize.
The rise in tensions and the amplification of socio-political and security crises generate direct and indirect effects on land which contribute to greatly complicating local land management: forced displacements, restructuring of transhumance routes, reconfiguration and in certain cases weakening of customary authorities, departure of elected officials from local authorities, questioning of land agreements, weakening of inter-community social ties, etc.
These changes are accompanied by dynamics of exclusion and concentration of land rights, such as the withdrawal of land, the occupation of land belonging to displaced people, the acceleration of the process of commodification of land around the reception sites of the displaced people. forced displaced persons, identity tensions, etc. In such a context, it therefore becomes necessary to question the effectiveness of local land governance models and instruments developed in different countries.
Far from technical approaches, the challenges of improving local land governance have never been so linked to the need to strengthen social cohesion between territorial actors in their diversity, to reweave intergenerational links made up of obligations and mechanisms of solidarity, and above all rebuilding a social pact between States, local power holders and citizens around principles of social justice to reinvent new ways of living together.
The reflections contained in this article come from the discussions held during the last seminar organized by the “Land & Development” Technical Committee (CTFD) in Saint Louis, Senegal in March 2023. This seminar brought together more than 70 participants, including stakeholders from civil society, experts from land administrations, academics and researchers, and gave rise to the sharing of analyzes and experiences carried out in their respective countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Senegal, Madagascar , Mali and Niger.
The CTFD, whose scientific leadership and secretariat are provided by GRET, aims to spark debates and fuel the thoughts and actions of land policy stakeholders and their partners, in a diversity of countries and continents. It thus acts for the recognition of the multiplicity of rights and uses of land and the need to have, around land issues, a multi-actor dialogue.
To go further, find the latest publications from the Saint Louis seminar on the website of the “Land & Development” Technical Committee:
Summary note n°34: The state of local land governance in West Africa and Madagascar
Summary note n°35: Preserving pastoralism – The challenges of recognizing pastoral commons in a context of multidimensional crisis in West Africa
Summary note n°36: Local land management in West Africa and Madagascar Issues, challenges and perspectives in a context of rising multifaceted crises and questioning of public authority
Perspectives on land n°14: Local land governance: What approaches and institutions are used to respond to the different challenges?
Perspectives on land n°15: From securing pastoral rights to planning developments: how can we better preserve livestock farming systems?
Perspectives on land n°16: Land observatories: between institutional anchors and citizen monitoring initiatives, what postures and what functions?
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