Titling as Land Reform in Tanzania: Contours, Conflicts and Convergence

The “land governance orthodoxy” that has dominated development circles for the past two decades posits that government-issued title deeds are a prerequisite for economic growth in Africa and elsewhere in the Global South. Anything other than formal certification is viewed as inadequate, informal, insecure and inanimate. In this paper, we explore the “institutional pluralism” that characterizes land formalization efforts in rural Tanzania. We find that the multiple (often competing) objectives, procedures, actors, justifications, technologies, and outcomes have produced a crowded and chaotic field of titling initiatives. Despite an investment of around USD 340 million, progress remains painfully slow—at a rate of ~1% per year—such that it will take the rest of this century to reach universal titling. And at what cost? Our study is based on appraisals of policy and project documents and interviews with government officials, donor agencies, project implementers and NGO staff. Discussion of the findings is supported by data from annual budget speeches, national-level statistics and survey data collected by our team from forty Tanzanian villages. We argue that it is time to return to a broader, integrated approach to rural development and recognize that local landholding systems offer high levels of security. Our findings have relevance beyond land formalization to other areas where duplicative efforts implemented in the name of progress might be counterproductive to achieving economic and social development goals.