‘Modern’ legal categories rarely take full account of the complexities of reality on the ground. Worse still, they sometimes lead to profound changes in social and economic relations, since providing security for one type of rights holder or issuing a particular land title (full or absolute) may negate the rights of other types of rights holders.
The three examples (from Niger, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast) outlined in this document suggest that we should always think of land as both a private and communal resource, consider the nature of the different individual and collective actors concerned, and see them as possible rights holders who may be recognised or ignored.
This is one of the PEDAGOGIC FACTSHEETS to gain understanding, ask the right questions, and take action on land tenure issues in West Africa produced during the “Land Tenure Policy Elaboration Support” mobilizing project financed by the Agence Française de Développement. These short documents aims at assisting those involved in the development and the implementation of land policies in West Africa to better understand the complexity of land issues, and to evolve in their benchmarks, based on discussions and recent experiments. Production of these factsheets was coordinated by the Hub Rural, the Land Net West Africa, Agter, the GRAF, and Roppa with the support of the “Land Tenure and Development” Technical Committee.