The land formalisation process and the peri-urban zone of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Land formalisation Formalising landholding through the issue of legal land titles has proved to be a seductive proposition for a number of governments in the global south during the first decade of the 21 century. Much of this thinking, and indeed policy development, has been based on Hernando De Soto’s conceptualisation of dead capital, perhaps most accessibly captured in The Mystery of Capital (De Soto, 2001). The argument has been very persuasive in some influential quarters, and not least in the World Bank, where land titling is seen particularly as having the potential to promote increased private investment within the poor countries of the global south (Keivani, Mattingly and Majedi, 2008).