CRG Seminar: Ambiguity and Innovations in Land Rights, Land Markets and Land Value Capture

Property and land rights and tenure systems constitute intricate frameworks characterised by their contextual definitions and inherent social construct. They embody a consensual agreement established to comprehend and acknowledge the liberties and restrictions imposed upon landowners or holders. The nuanced nature of property rights lies in examining specific entitlements attributed to landowners, encompassing a diverse array of socio-economic, cultural, and spatial considerations. Despite being a social construct, land and property rights find safeguarding through legal systems intricately intertwined with cultural norms, traditions, and historical precedents.

The conceptualisation of property rights as a dynamic bundle of sticks underscores their capacity for construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction, thereby introducing fluidity, ambiguity, and potential conflicts into the landscape of land ownership and landholding. The study Land Governance: Unbundling Ambiguities in Property Rights and the Interconnectedness to Innovative Approaches in Land Tenure Systems, Land Markets and Development, and Land Value Capture by Ore Fike addresses the complexity of ambiguous property rights in peri-urban Ghana and Tanzania and unbundles how these ambiguities interconnect with innovations in land tenure modalities, land markets, land development processes and land value capture instruments in peri-urban areas of Sub-Saharan Africa. Despite the perceived ambiguity in countries grappling with land tenure plurality, these regions often exhibit vibrant, active, and rapidly growing land markets accompanied by corresponding developments. An imperative inquiry arises to discern the true nature of these pluralities—whether they are genuinely ambiguous and, if so, for whom and how they manifest themselves as innovations within the land governance setup.

This seminar is organised by the CRG 'Governance, Entrepreneurship, and Inclusive Development' in the framework of its Africa in Practice Seminar Series.

This event takes place in person in Leiden. Online participation will not be possible.

Photo credits: International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (via Flickr).