Factors Affecting Land Titling during Regularization of Informal Settlements in Dar es Salaam Tanzania

Abstract

The nature and characteristics of informal settlements in Tanzania indicates that informal landholders face a number of constraints attributable to weak land tenure security. In the beginning of 2016, the government undertook major initiatives to regularize informal settlements with limited success on land title uptake. This paper investigates the landholders’ willingness to change land tenure status and constraints faced thereof based on a dataset of 228 questionnaires, interviews and focus group discussions from informal settlements land occupiers in three wards of Dar es Salaam City, Tanzania. The findings indicate that despite a relatively lower rate of land title uptakes in the study areas, landholders are relatively more willing to change their land tenure status. Among the constraints identified include the costs and longer time taken to process the titles which were observed to be the most serious obstacles. Moreover, the oldest age group was observed to be the most reluctant age group to change tenure status when compared to relatively younger age groups although they were mostly aware of the benefits of changing tenure status. Furthermore, the findings indicate that, during title processing, the oldest age group faced the least constraints among the age groups studied. Since the oldest age group are the majority landholders, their reluctance to process title documents significantly reduces the number of title documents issued. In terms of education, the findings show that the highly educated groups have relatively lower willingness to change tenure status than other education groups. Such observation suggests that the more a landholder is educated, the more he or she is aware of the title benefit but the less likely him or her is to process a land title document. In terms of policy implication, for the poor class in informal settlement, regularization cost reduction could be an effective means to facilitate take up of land titles during regularization program though the same policy initiative may not work among the highly educated. For the highly educated and probably the rich, an informality tax could work, provided cheaper mechanisms to collect such tax are devised.