Paper short abstract:

Since the 2000s, the outskirts of Bamako have been heavily covered by private titles of ownership. Who benefits from these acquisitions and the lack of investment that follows? How do these transactions on land affect the relationship between commercial and bureaucratic elites in the urban Mali?

Paper long abstract:

Since the 2000s, land ownership has been affected by an exponential registration of titles in the outskirts of Bamako, in the line with new rules of liberalized management under the Third Republic. In the District of Kati, surrounding the capital city, private property is taking over from the administrative allocation of provisional concessions that had historically oriented the housing market and agricultural development of Bamako. The uncontrolled number of titles also argues how speculative trends take advantage of a rampant political crisis in the country and nourishes it at the same time.

Who takes advantage of formal transactions far from the city centre? How do one understand that they are shifting to parcelling operations while the city's rural fringe is kept without territorial investment nor local planning?

The paper aims to identify the winners of this expanding land pressure. What is the use of this land capital accumulated in their hands, when raising many conflicts in the local communities? How does it change the Malian commercial elites' practices of investment and their relationship with the bureaucratic elites? How does it interfere with increasing needs of housing and professional visibility expressed by emerging middle classes? While individualized rights are usually accused of impairing social cohesion, in favour of a stratified class-society, how do they keep on being embedded in interpersonal relationship in the Malian society? To what extent does the race to private property still combine with commitments in relational network and clientelism?