Resource information
This paper presents a new type of land
market analysis relevant to cities with plural tenure
systems as in West Africa. The methodology hinges on a
systemic analysis of land delivery channels, which helps to
show how land is initially made available for circulation,
how tenure can be formalized incrementally, and the
different means whereby households can access land. The
analysis is applied to the area of Bamako in Mali, where
information was collected through (i) interviews with key
informants, (ii) a literature review on land policies,
public allocations, and customary transfers of land, (iii) a
press review on land disputes, and (iv) a survey of more
than 1,600 land transfers of un-built plots that occurred
between 2009 and 2012. The analysis finds that land is
mostly accessed through an informal customary channel,
whereby peri-urban land is transformed from agricultural to
residential use, and through a public channel, which
involves the administrative allocation of residential plots
to households. The integrated analysis of land markets and
land institutions stresses the complexity of procedures and
the extra-legality of practices that strongly affect the
functioning of formal and informal markets and make access
to land costly and insecure, with negative social, economic,
and environmental impacts over the long term.
