Context and backgroundDespite a social recomposition marked by the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of the layers of servile origin, access to land ownership rights for descendants of servile origin is far from guaranteed in Mauritania. Customary law based on Islamic jurisprudence stands up to the law of 1960 and the decrees of 1983 and previous legal reforms; in short, the modern legal arsenal does not elucidate, justify or facilitate equitable access of the descendants of the former servile strata to land like other landless Mauritanian communities.

The United Republic of Tanzania has been administratively restructuring and Transforming its Local Government Authorities from lowest to higher rank based on ranking structural ideas adopted from China. Based on that regard, the Urban Local Government of Tanzania has been categorized into administrative hierarchical positions of Trade Centers, Townships, Towns, Municipalities and Cities. Materially, the administrative transformation of urban authorities in Tanzania resulted in the reemergence of rural urbanism and the urban village in urban Localities.

Are “informal real estate markets” really markets? Alternatively, are “informal property rights” tradable? A few years ago, just the mention of these concepts in a title would render it a misnomer. The aim of this paper is to explore the controversies in literature around the use of the concept “informal real estate markets”. The term “informal” comes with different connotations in literature; and for many years it denoted “illegality”.