Ouedraogo H.; Basserie V.. 2011. Land Policies [en]

Most francophone African states nationalised the colonial land tenure systems they inherited at Independence and then periodically adjusted them according to the situation in each country. Their citizens have yet to enjoy secure land rights, and there is still a yawning gap between the law and actual practice at both the lowest and highest levels.

This paper argues that the challenge of securing tenure can only be met successfully by adopting clear and consensual land policies; and that the policy frameworks guiding public action on land need to be negotiated with the various stakeholders concerned and written into official land policy documents.

This is one of the PEDAGOGIC FACTSHEETS to gain understanding, ask the right questions, and take action on land tenure issues in West Africa produced during the “Land Tenure Policy Elaboration Support” mobilizing project financed by the Agence Française de Développement. These short documents aims at assisting those involved in the development and the implementation of land policies in West Africa to better understand the complexity of land issues, and to evolve in their benchmarks, based on discussions and recent experiments. Production of these factsheets was coordinated by the Hub Rural, the Land Net West Africa, Agter, the GRAF, and Roppa with the support of the “Land Tenure and Development” Technical Committee.