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Legal Empowerment of the Poor through Property Rights Reform: Tensions and Trade-offs of Land Registration and Titling in Sub-Saharan Africa

This resource comes from the Journal of Development Studies, 2019 Vol. 55, No. 3, 384–400.

Land registration and titling in Africa is often advocated as a pro-poor legal empowerment strategy. Advocates have put forth different visions of the substantive goals this is to achieve. Some see registration and titling as a way to protect smallholders’ rights of access to land. Others frame land registration as part of community-protection or ethno-justice agendas. Still others see legal empowerment in the market-enhancing commodification of property rights. This paper contrasts these different visions, showing that each entails tensions and trade-offs. The analysis helps explain why land law reforms aiming at legal empowerment may be controversial or divisive in African countries.

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Uploaded on: Mar 01, 2019
Year Published: 2019
Author: Catherine Boone


Resource Tags

Resource Type: Practitioner Resources Issues: Environmental Justice, Labor & Employment Tool Type: Journal Articles & Books Target Population: Rural Method: Research Languages: English Regions: Sub-Saharan Africa