Tanzania Private Interests in Land in a Community Land Policy
Current Tanzanian land law offers registration of private interests in land in the form of Certificates of Customary Rights of Occupancy (CCROs) within a broader community lands approach. We conducted qualitative research on the issuance of CCROs along a mountain slope transect in the Meru district in northeast Tanzania. This area features intensified smallholder agriculture, which evolutionary theory suggests is well adapted for the registration of private interests in land.
It also features strong customary authorities of the sort that legal pluralism theory suggests may lead to property relations that are not singular and evolving but multiple and co-existing. We found that tenure was highly individualized and local demand for CCROs was expressed in a context of both agricultural intensification and nascent urbanization.
Nevertheless, due to high cost and coordination constraints, this demand did not deliver widespread registration. While CCROs were perceived as useful to resolve land conflicts and put up as collateral for loans, they were not essential as a variety of alternative approaches were in place. In this forum shopping, plurality was not in itself a problem and individuals increasingly chose quasi-formal paper authorizations over customary rituals.
Based on our findings, we recommend that land administration systems more explicitly build on existing quasi-formal practice and that community land approaches include a diversity of national programs tailored to different local community circumstances.