Paper short abstract:

Five land uses dominate the airport reserve: agriculture, villages, unplanned settlements, residential/ commercial zones related to the airport, French restricted military areas. Land tenure is pluralistic. Conflicts over land and leadership emerge due to population pressure and airport expansion.

Paper long abstract:

The study argues that French legacies need to be understood as wider path dependencies resulting from of colonialism, especially French West Africa, and the francophonie, rather than reducing the analysis to the French as initially main actors in city making and defining legal land tenure. Around the FHB International Airport in Abidjan, five land uses dominated the airport reserve: urban agriculture; villages; large and dense unplanned settlements; residential/ commercial zones related to the airport; and French restricted military areas. Since the declaration of the reserve as a public utility, residents established a pluralistic tenure system. Nobody may hold legal land titles. Nationality and belonging, followership and alliances with either the autochthonous Ebrié, with West African migrant communities and/or with the municipal council were of central importance in order to live and work on the airport reserve. Due to persistent population pressure and airport expansion, long-standing customary land arrangements between the Ebrié and some communities of farmers and fishermen of migrant origin are scrutinised. Villages, going back to diverse social and tenure contracts and holding different legal rights in the municipal governance system, compete over the legitimacy to give out temporal land titles. Land transactions impact the spatial form and composition of the resident population on the airport reserve and therefore are contested. Obscure land scams further fuel the emergence of land conflicts. The study presents the analysis of ethnographic data from November/ December 2021.