Paper short abstract:

Paper explores the relationship between property right formalization, dispossession and conflict, based on research in three regions of Tanzania: Iringa, Mbeya and Manyara.

Paper long abstract:

One of the most dramatic developments in Tanzania in recent years is the movement to formalize property rights. The process, which started in 2004 in Mbozi District, Mbeya Region, has been rapidly spreading to other regions of the country. A particularly interesting aspect of the titling process in Tanzania is the multiplicity of actors involved and with that a plethora of explanations of the importance of formalizing property rights. Most recently donors are considering a massive upscaling of formalization to protect farmers from land grabbing, secure property rights and reduce conflict. At the same time donors are sponsoring what could be largest land grab in the history of the country. Under the SAGCOT (Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania) program announced in 2012, the government has promised to transfer 17.9% of village land to the general land category for foreign investment with arguments that plenty of land is freely available and unoccupied. Part of the drive to formalization thus entails the surveying, mapping and planning of village land areas with the intention of demarcating some land for transfer to the general lands category. Yet in our four-year study in Manyara and Mbeya regions, one of the lead causes of violence and conflict is the setting of boundaries both between villages under formalization efforts and between villages and large-scale private investor landholdings. As but one example: in the fertile and water-rich Kiru Valley of Manyara region, displaced landless villagers have taken up armed resistance, looting and burning investor properties and contesting their assigned roles as wage laborers on vast sugarcane and rice plantations. The paper will map out the terrain of contestation, conflict and dispossession at the core of the political economy of property right formalization in rural Tanzania, where a process of ‘dispossession by formalization’ is arguably underway.