Tinkering with tenure: the community land trust experiment in Voi, Kenya

Projects to secure land rights for the urban poor have been implemented in Sub-Saharan Africa for over 30 years. A recurrent issue in such projects is the provision of sustainable land tenure for beneficiaries. Commonly, individual titles with restrictions on resale have been used. Despite these, recipients often sell their land rights to more affluent city dwellers exacerbating the growth of slums (Habitat Int 11 (1987) 173). Policymakers are investigating alternative tenure forms, including community-based institutions, which they hope will make ownership of land more affordable and sustainable for the urban poor. The paper presents an analysis of an informal settlement upgrading project in Voi, Kenya in which the Community Land Trust (CLT) model was used to provide tenure security (Land Use Policy 14(3) (1997) 215). The paper reviews why the CLT model was entertained as a tenure alternative and evaluates how the model has performed in a 6-year period of operation in meeting various objectives including providing affordable, sustainable land ownership and preventing absenteeism. The implementation experience of a sister project in Kilifi, Kenya that utilized individual leasehold tenure as an ownership form is presented as a counter example to the Voi experience. The paper shows that despite provisions for strong community control, the CLT model has not been able to achieve the above goals. A variety of reasons are given for the model's poor performance, including the legal complexity of the model, a lack of on-going governmental support for the model and the project, and the divisive issue of land allocation for remaining parcels of land within the settlement. The paper concludes that on-going experimentation with the CLT model is not advisable at this time. Rather, the paper recommends that planners involved in informal settlement upgrading need to understand and recognize informal or customary institutions and try to incorporate them into de jure institutions in order to enhance tenure security and better manage urban land (Reforming urban land policies and institutions in developing countries.(c) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.