Titling as Land Reform in Tanzania: Contours, Conflicts and Convergence

Abstract

The “land governance orthodoxy” that has dominated development circles for the past two decades posits that government-issued title deeds are a prerequisite for economic growth in Africa and elsewhere in the Global South. Anything other than formal certification is viewed as inadequate, informal, insecure and inanimate. In this paper, we explore the “institutional pluralism” that characterizes land formalization efforts in rural Tanzania. We find that the multiple (often competing) objectives, procedures, actors, justifications, technologies, and outcomes have produced a crowded and chaotic field of titling initiatives. Despite an investment of around USD 340 million, progress remains painfully slow—at a rate of ~1% per year—such that it will take the rest of this century to reach universal titling. And at what cost? Our study is based on appraisals of policy and project documents and interviews with government officials, donor agencies, project implementers and NGO staff. Discussion of the findings is supported by data from annual budget speeches, national-level statistics and survey data collected by our team from forty Tanzanian villages. We argue that it is time to return to a broader, integrated approach to rural development and recognize that local landholding systems offer high levels of security. Our findings have relevance beyond land formalization to other areas where duplicative efforts implemented in the name of progress might be counterproductive to achieving economic and social development goals.

1. Introduction: Land Titling as Land Reform

Land reform efforts from the early post-colonial era to today have undergone an evolution that has ignored political shifts and resulted in chaotic pluralism in land management, especially in the Global South. In the 1960s and 1970s, both donor and academic literature demonstrated a nuanced understanding of the delicacy of land reform as it relates to pre-existing cultural norms and economic geography. As Tanzania and other African countries emerged from colonialism, there was a general consensus among development economists that creating economic growth through improving rural agricultural outputs was a major priority. Within this framework, land reform was a second-order issue with very few initial development or policy programs directly addressing it. Land tenure was positioned as a complex, multi-layered and often idiosyncratic institution that was intimately tied to rural livelihoods [1]. Rather than pre-selecting a single system of titling or tenure as superior to other program designs, economists encouraged donors to take local conditions into consideration. A major goal of resulting land reform programs was to increase land access to a wider share of citizens [2,3,4,5].

Over time, however, land reform literature and programs have homed in on delivering government-issued land titles with increasingly complicated and expensive methods, across any and all contexts, in the interests of increasing security, reducing poverty and improving livelihoods. Formalizing property rights has become the reigning “theory of change” [6]—a set of assumptions about a proposed intervention and its anticipated effects—and produced a “land governance orthodoxy” that dominates economic development policy [7,8]. Driven by new institutional economics, its adherents believe that Western economic development depended on the explicit protection of secure property rights as a check against expropriation by government or elites [9,10,11,12]. Many donors followed this rationale with uniform technical recommendations to provide land registries, streamline property registration, increase cadastral information, and formalize property ownership [13]. Formal land titling was also theoretically linked to poverty alleviation with claims of increased investment, better access to credit, increased agricultural output, improved social mobility, and the development of land sales markets. Hernando De Soto’s The Mystery of Capital (2000), a mainstay of this literature, claimed that paper titles not only increased access to credit but increased the time available to engage in productive activities by reducing the time necessary to defend property rights [14], a position long established in the neoclassical economic literature by authors like Alchian and Demsetz [15,16].

This shift ignored analytical work accounting for a myriad of difficulties in implementing land reform and reflects a now dominant theoretical position promoting the perceived benefits of land title reform. Continuous analysis, including at times World Bank literature, cautioned that in order to be successful land reform must be integrated into larger reform programs, which address inadequacies in credit and labor markets [17,18,19,20,21]. Yet, land reform has been attempted in piecemeal projects, often as part of other programs by international policymakers, nongovernmental organizations, donors, local governments, and central governments. These attempts often lead to contradictory and chaotic realities concerning land ownership. Speaking of land formalization efforts in the 1970s and 1980s, Peters critiques the “fallacy of assuming that land title would improve tenure security and lead to increased agricultural investment and productivity. Not only did the programs fail to achieve those ends, but they also encouraged speculation and fraudulent land claims by outsiders, thus displacing the very people—the local users of land—who were supposed to acquire increased security through land title. As a result, the programs frequently exacerbated conflicts and patterns of unequal access to land …” [22]. Noting that population growth, environmental degradation and slow rates of economic development underlie land struggles across the continent, Berry argues that: “Struggles over land in postcolonial Africa have been as much about power and the legitimacy of competing claims to authority, as about control of property per se” [23]. Finally, Boone argues that “titling almost always involves a transformation and redistribution of rights” [24], p. 384. Peters’ Berry’s and Boone’s concerns have been amplified by a number of scholars examining formalization efforts across Africa who question the value of the enterprise, the gap between promised and realized outcomes and who benefits from it [25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33].

The formalization agenda, though ostensibly pursued to protect the rights of smallholders and more quietly those of private investors, has led in some cases to erosion of control over rural land in Tanzania from local to central control. Land in Tanzania falls into three categories and formalization varies according to the type of land in question. These are:

• Village Land: Land in registered villages under the jurisdiction of elected village councils;
• Reserved Land: Land protected for conservation purposes and spanning numerous categories (e.g., national parks, game reserves, wildlife management areas, forest reserves, water sources), administered by the relevant authority (e.g., national parks fall under the jurisdiction of the Tanzania National Parks Authority, TANAPA, while forests are managed by the Tanzania Forest Services, TFS);
• General Land: All public land which is not reserved land or village land, generally including urban settlements, infrastructure and public utilities, and large-scale (>50 acres) investments in rural areas.

General land holdings are titled with Certificates of Right of Occupancy (CROs) while Certificates of Customary Right of Occupancy (CCROs) are the title deeds issued for village land holdings. Reserved land is not eligible for individualized titling.

Tanzania’s government fully adopted the rhetoric of titling as a means of alleviating poverty and increasing economic development. Following the introduction of a new National Land Policy in 1995 and new land laws in 1999 (The Land Act No. 4 and The Village Land Act No. 5), the Government of Tanzania (GoT) under third President Benjamin Mkapa (1995–2005) championed the goal of surveying, registering and titling the entire country. This pointedly ignored the recommendations of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Land Matters launched in 1992 and chaired by Issa Shivji, Professor of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam [34]. The Commission had been tasked with assessing the state of affairs concerning rural and urban land use and ownership by gathering perspectives from a broad range of constituents. This would then inform the drafting of the 1995 National Land Policy. Over the course of a year, the Commission met with and listened to an impressive swath of people from across the country. In its final (1994) report, it recommended that since 85% of the population were smallholder farmers and pastoralists dependent on land for their livelihoods, the priority should be to strengthen local/customary authority over land and correspondingly reduce the power of the Executive arm. However, the Commission’s recommendations were bypassed, and the 1995 National Land Policy (updated in 1997 and again in 2023) instead states unambiguously that “All Land in Tanzania is public land vested in the President as trustee on behalf of all citizens,” and “The Minister responsible for lands shall be the sole authority responsible for land matters” [35,36].

President Mkapa, who had participated in the High-Level Commission for Legal Empowerment of the Poor (CLEP) hosted by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in 2005, became convinced that the lack of formalized rights explained the continued poverty of his country. He purportedly required every member of his Cabinet to read The Mystery of Capital and soon thereafter, de Soto’s Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD) was invited to serve as a consultant on formalization efforts in Tanzania. Unusually, the ILD-led initiative (with initial funding from the Norwegian government) was housed within the President’s office rather than in the Ministry of Lands1 and named the “Program to Formalize the Assets of the Poor of Tanzania and Strengthen the Rule of Law,” popularly known by its Swahili acronym MKURABITA (Mpango wa Kurasimisha Rasilimali na Biashara za Wanyonge Tanzania)2. The program’s stated goal was “to economically empower the poor majority in the country, by increasing their access to property and business opportunities, in order to develop a strong expanded market economy” [37]. Beyond introducing land titling in rural areas and in urban informal settlements, it encompassed a series of initiatives that included issuance of small-scale business licenses, imposition of value-added taxes (VAT), issuance of national ID cards, and programs encouraging commercial investment by small- and large-scale investors to improve agricultural productivity. Titling would not only enhance rural security and offer protection from land-grabbing elites but also attract private investors and—with these other measures—improve Tanzania’s standing in the World Bank’s Doing Business rankings [38,39].

This rhetoric and its theoretical underpinning ignore the causes of existing inequalities, which include political maneuvering and resource capture by elites, the forced withdrawal of state subsidies and support for agriculture under structural adjustment, continuing inequities in global trade and production including Africa’s low position in the international supply chain, and the expansion of the market to all domains of social life [7,22,40,41]. Other authors have questioned the applicability of experiences elsewhere to conditions in Sub-Saharan Africa [17,42,43]. Formal property rights, often through increased land prices, new taxes, and foreclosure from indebtedness, enable land grabs by the powerful. A 2006 World Bank report admits that titling programs involve major reforms that often create opportunities for elite capture where influence allows acquisition of titles in an opaque manner [20]. It also acknowledges that locally recognized and enforced property rights can be very secure (ibid.).

Ignoring mounting evidence from across the globe that titling decreases security of tenure and leads to increased land expropriation by elites, economic polarization and conflict [7,9,22,34,44,45], titling advocates nevertheless argue that land market distortions can be resolved by expanding the distribution of land titles. This second-best justification relies on incremental progress towards free market mechanisms assuming that it will inevitably lead to more equitable and efficient land distribution. However, as German details, the discursive shift from “land-grabbing” to “land governance” signals a disturbing consolidation of powerful interests spanning agribusiness, the financialization of agriculture, and a restructured global food regime that together are facilitating “the ongoing alienation of customary land to agribusiness firms, and the growing concentration of land rights, access, and control at local, national, and global scales” [7] (p. 289).

Formalization in Tanzania has been driven primarily by external actors, and the current situation effectively exemplifies the problem of “institutional pluralism”, wherein “the multitude of politico-legal institutions, each ‘issuing’ rules and principles, amplifies the uncertainty of land rights” [46] (p. 2). As explored below, institutional pluralism exists in many dimensions, from the actors involved and the design of programs, to the technologies employed and the objectives pursued. As a result, the benefits of existing tenure systems in sustaining rural livelihoods and in resolving disputes are ignored [47,48]. Finally, in contradiction to internal recommendations from the Shivji Commission and with the complicity of state-level actors [49], formalization is reducing rather than strengthening local control over land. The big winner, and the entity that rural landholders most fear losing their land to, is not foreign investors, as the land-grabbing literature argues, but the Tanzanian state.

In this paper, we investigate the singular focus on titling adopted as a means of alleviating poverty and increasing economic development over two decades in Tanzania. Embraced by multiple actors for multiple reasons, it is exacerbating confusion, conflict and competing claims in a country that has emerged as a primary testing ground for the anticipated benefits of land formalization. The next section notes the extensive sources of information and empirical data that have facilitated our comprehensive review of the issue. The third section examines the myriad players, programs and motivations involved in titling and provides insight into its successes and failures. We then turn to the impact of the titling programs on the rural landowner, drawing on our survey data, to understand whether the goals of formalization targeting the rural landowner are being met. The final section concludes the paper, arguing the need for an integrated approach to rural development that recognizes local landholding systems and identifying the state as the key beneficiary of formalization.

2. Methods

To understand how institutional pluralism has characterized land formalization initiatives in Tanzania, we used three main sources of information related to formalization: (1) project and policy documents, and annual Land Ministry budget speeches to Parliament; (2) interviews with key actors and stakeholders, including both implementors and beneficiaries; and (3) household data from national, village and household surveys. Our research covered programs and villages in the regions of Dodoma, Kigoma, Manyara, Mbeya and Songwe. Mbeya was selected because it was the first region where titling was introduced and Manyara was included so we could observe the World Bank’s Private Sector Competitiveness Project (PSCP)’s village-wide (systematic) titling process firsthand. Other regions were included to ensure variability in ecological conditions and livelihood strategies. We reviewed primary documentation from donor agencies and local ministries dating back to the 1960s. This revealed a multitude of programs that range from single donor efforts in a small number of rural villages to cooperative efforts between dozens of donors across large portions of the country. A non-exhaustive list of 81 organizations is shown in Appendix A 

Table A1. A Non-Exhaustive List of Land Formalization Projects and Programs, 1997–2025.

Name of Organization	Acronym	NGO	Govt/Donor	Company
African Wildlife Foundation	AWF	1
Agricultural Non-State Actors Forum	ANSAF	1
Ardhi Institute Morogoro	ARIMO		1
Belgian Development Agency (formerly Belgian Technical Cooperation)	ENABEL		1
CARE International	CARE	1
Center for International Forestry Research	CIFOR	1
Commonwealth Forestry Association	CFA	1
Community Research and Development Services	CORDS	1
CONCERN Worldwide	CONCERN	1
Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research	CGIAR	1
Development Associates International	DAI	1		1
Danish International Development Agency	DANIDA		1
Dodoma Environmental Network	DONET	1
Dorobo Safaris		1		1
Eastern Africa Land Administration Network	EALAN	1
Eco Village Adaptation to Climate Change in Central Tanzania	EcoACT	1
Economic and Social Research Foundation of Tanzania	ESRF	1
Environment for Development	EfD	1
European Union	EU		1
Food and Agricultural Research Management	FARM Africa	1
Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (formerly DFID) (UK)	FCDO		1
Foundation for Civil Society	FCS	1
Global Water Initiative—East Africa	GWI	1
Great Lakes of Africa Centre, University of Antwerp	GLAC	1
HakiMadini		1
Illovo Sugar Africa				1
International Food Policy Research Institute	IFPRI		1
International Fund for Agricultural Development	IFAD		1
International Union for Conservation of Nature	IUCN		1
Journal of Land Administration in Eastern Africa	JLAEA	1
Kibaya, Kimana, Njoro, Ndaleta, Namelock, and Partimbo Development Program	KINNAPA	1
Kigoma Sugar				1
Land Equity International				1
Land Portal Foundation		1
Land Rights Research and Resources Institute	HAKIARDHI	1
Landscape Conservation in Western Tanzania (assoc w/Jane Goodall Institute)	LCWT	1
Lawyers’ Environmental Action Team	LEAT	1
Legal and Human Rights Centre	LHRC	1
Maasai Women Development Association	MWEDO	1
Mpango wa Kurasimisha Rasilimali na Biashara za Wanyonge Tanzania	MKURABITA		1
Mtandao wa Vikundi vya Wakulima Tanzania	MVIWATA	1
National Land Forum	NALAF	1
Nature Conservancy		1
Nile Basin Initiative	NBI	1
Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation	NORAD		1
Oxfam International	OXFAM	1
Parakuiyo Pastoralists Indigenous Community Development Organisation	PAICODEO	1
Pastoral Women’s Council		1
Pastoralists Indigenous Non-Governmental Organizations Forum	PINGO’s Forum	1
Pastoralists’ Survival Options	NAADUTARO	1
PELUM Association Tanzania	PELUM	1
Regional Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support Systems	ReSAKSS			1
Research on Poverty Alleviation	REPOA	1
Resource Conflict Institute	RECONCILE	1
Resource Equity		1
Rift Valley Institute	RVI	1
Royal Danish Embassy of Tanzania			1
Netherlands Development Organization	SNV		1
Southern African Development Community	SADC		1
Southern African Legal Information Institute	SAFLII	1
Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania	SAGCOT		1
Swedish International Development Agency	SIDA		1
Swiss Development Cooperation Program	SDC		1
Tanzania Gender Networking Program	TGNP	1
Tanzania Land Alliance	TALA	1
Tanzania National Parks Authority	TANAPA		1
Tanzania Natural Resource Forum	TNRF	1
Tanzania Women Lawyers Association	TAWLA	1
Tanzanian Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries	MALF		1
Tanzanian Ministry of Lands, Housing and Human Settlements Development			1
Ujamaa Community Resource Team	UCRT	1
United States Agency for International Development	USAID		1
University of Dar es Salaam	UDSM		1
Vétérinaires Sans Frontières Belgium	VSF Belgium	1
Wildlife Conservation Society	WCS	1
Women’s Land Tenure Security	WOLTS	1
Women’s Legal Aid Centre	WLAC	1
World Bank	WB		1
World Wildlife Fund	WWF	1
Totals		53	22	6

, and an overview of selected details for 26 organizations is provided in Appendix A 

Table A2. Some Details for Selected Projects and Programs, 1997–2025.

Start Year	Project	Source	Source Type	Total Amount (USD)	Est Amount on Land Reform
1997	Land Management Programme (LAMP)	SIDA	Bi-Lateral Donor	16,874,520	14,278,440
2002	Mbozi Pilot Project	EU	Bi-Lateral Donor	1,000,000	1,000,000
2004	MKURABITA	Norway	Bi-Lateral Donor	7,000,000	7,000,000
2005	Private Sector Competitiveness Project (PSCP) 1	World Bank	Multi-Lateral Donor	22,500,000	18,000,000
2005	PSCP 1	World Bank	Multi-Lateral Donor	4,000,000	3,200,000
2005	PSCP 1	World Bank	Multi-Lateral Donor	17,500,000	14,000,000
2005	Rights-Based Programme	Concern	NGO	3,602,808	3,602,808
2007	MKURABITA	URT	Government	10,000,000	10,000,000
2007	MKURABITA	URT	Government	4,191,200	4,191,200
2012	Agricultural Sector Development Programme	IFAD	Multi-Lateral Donor	2,370,000	2,370,000
2009	MKURABITA	URT	Government	2,508,000	2,508,000
2010	MKURABITA	URT	Government	4,536,000	4,536,000
2010	Sustainable Management of Land and Environment, SMOLE, II	Finland	Bi-Lateral Donor	11,946,474	9,557,179
2010	Lindi and Mtwara Agribusiness Support project LIMAS	Finland	Bi-Lateral Donor	9,982,980	1,996,596
2011	MKURABITA	URT	Government	4,500,000	4,500,000
2011	Land and Natural Resources Tenure Security Learning Initiative	IFAD	Multi-Lateral Donor	300,000	300,000
2012	SERA Project	USAID	Bi-Lateral Donor	1,500,000	1,500,000
2013	PSCP 2	World Bank	Multi-Lateral Donor	35,000,000	35,000,000
2013	PSCP 2	World Bank	Multi-Lateral Donor	15,000,000	15,000,000
2013	PSCP 2	World Bank	Multi-Lateral Donor	10,500,000	10,500,000
2013	Land Transparency Partnership	DFID	Bi-Lateral Donor	8,200,000	8,200,000
2014	Mobile App	USAID	Bi-Lateral Donor	1,000,000	1,000,000
2014	Mobile Pilot	USAID	Bi-Lateral Donor	1,000,000	1,000,000
2015	Land Tenure Assistance	USAID	Bi-Lateral Donor	6,000,000	6,000,000
2016	Land Tenure Support Program	DANIDA/SIDA/DFID/NORAD	Bi-Lateral Donor	10,484,779	10,484,779
2021	Land Tenure Improvement Program	World Bank	Multi-Lateral Donor	150,000,000	150,000,000
Total Funding					USD 339,725,002

Source: Project and Program Documents.

. Annual budget speeches (in Swahili) between 2006 and 2025 were reviewed to obtain information on CROs, CCROs, Village Land Certificates (VLCs) and Village Land Use Plans (VLUPs). Data related to CCROs are provided in Appendix A 

Table A3. Number of Villages and Target vs. Actual Number of CCROs, 2006–2025.

Year	Villages	CCROS (Ministry)		CCROS (LSTP)		CCROS (LTIP)
	Total	Target	Actual	Target	Actual	Target	Actual
2005/06			1262
2006/07			3940
2007/08			8815
2008/09	11,000		20,512
2009/10	11,000	100,000	93,400
2010/11		138,000
2011/12	11,817	45,000	21,169
2012/13	11,467	50,000	32,155
2013/14		50,000	24,945
2014/15		70,000	25,897
2015/16	12,545		10,891
2016/17		57,000	35,002	50,000
2017/18		57,000	49,716	57,000
2018/19	12,545	50,000	47,944	120,000
2019/20		150,000	92,585	60,000
2020/21	12,319	520,000	34,869
2021/22		520,000	42,684
2022/23	12,318	520,000	51,762			50,000
2023/24	12,318	520,000	21,953			200,000
2024/25	12,333	520,000	152,667			300,000
Totals		3,367,000	772,168	287,000	193,529	550,000	347,387

Source: Data compiled from annual budget speeches of Ministers of Land to the Tanzanian Parliament [63,64,65,99,100,101,102,103,104,105,106,107,108,109,110,111,112,113,114]. The year cited shows first the year of the target and then the year of the yield. The CCRO (Ministry) numbers represent targets and yields of the Ministry only. Data for the World Bank’s LTSP (2016–2019) and LTIP (2021–2025) programs are presented separately. The LTSP and the LTIP targets are from budget speeches. Yields from these programs are shown as totals at the end of the programs, since reporting of their outcomes is fragmentary. The LTIP total is compiled from annual figures in budget speeches while the LTIP total is from the LTIP report as of May 2025 [67], p. 15.

. We also conducted semi-structured interviews with government officials at the national, regional, district and village levels and project managers from donor agencies, both domestic and international, to better understand the motivations and approaches of each of these programs. To understand the local impact of land titling programs, we referred to data from the National Panel Survey Wave 5 (NPS) [50,51]3 and our village-based household Land Rights and Rural Livelihoods (LRRL) survey. For our LRRL survey, about ~2000 rural households were interviewed in Wave 1 between 2010 and 2016, and about ~1000 of them were reinterviewed in Wave 2 between five to eight years later. Forty villages in the regions of Dodoma, Kigoma, Manyara, Mbeya and Songwe, about half of which had titling programs, were selected to represent a diversity of ecological, cultural, and agricultural zones. In each of these villages, about fifty households were randomly selected from an administrative list of household heads available at the village level. The survey obtained information, among others, on household characteristics, productive activities, land ownership, credit practices and opinions on a range of issues. Our analysis here is focused on heads of household as they are the decision-makers for ownership of land. A total of 1580 household heads provided information on ownership of land and titling. About 33 percent were female. About 26% were less than 35 years old, ~40% between 35 and 50 years of age and the rest older than 50 years old. About 32% had no formal education, ~64% primary education and ~4% secondary or tertiary education. The combination of these different sources of information has allowed us to examine the multilayered and multi-institutional complexity of land titling in Tanzania. All statistical analyses were carried out using Stata Statistical Software: Release 19.

3. Plurality of Titling Initiatives

Our review of policy and program documents related to titling initiatives found that the programs and actors pushing them forward have contrasting and sometimes contradictory motivations. As elaborated below, some programs explicitly sought to increase access to credit or improve women’s or pastoralists’ land rights, while others sought to prioritize poverty reduction, address land conflicts, or strengthen wildlife conservation. These programs converge on a singular focus on titling. We find that the multi-dimensional plurality of actors, programs, technologies and objectives has created on-the-ground confusion that not only produces uncertainty, insecurity and conflict but also undermines the shared goal of increasing the percentage of land across rural Tanzania with formal title.

3.1. Plural Actors: State and Non-State Institutions

Across our study sites spanning five regions of Tanzania, we found the involvement of multiple government agencies, donors, NGOs and formalization programs, which inadvertently created a plural governance structure. Over the course of our research, we came across 53 NGOs, 22 government entities and 6 private companies either funding or implementing formalization programs (Appendix A Table A1). For 26 of these, we were able to obtain program and funding documentation and selected details (Appendix A Table A2).

Figure 1 depicts money flowing from both GoT and non-state actors into formalization programs on the left and different actors implementing the programs on the right. Note that the size of the bar is the relative share of funding that each actor contributes or expends for formalization programs. The gray section shows that non-state actors provide a majority of the funding while the blue section represents direct funding from the GoT. In particular, the World Bank has been the largest single contributor to formalization funding. On the right side, the National Government, and specifically the Ministry of Lands, implements the largest share of the funding. Nonetheless, there are also District Government and Village Government implementors that may contradict the efforts at another level of government. For instance, we have identified situations in which District Governments implemented formalization programs that were not recognized at the Ministry of Lands or at odds with initiatives implemented out of the President’s Office. The existence of often competing priorities from funders versus implementors produces a complex and often contradictory governance structure on the ground.

Moreover, each funder has specific motivations (described below) that are reflected in individual formalization programs with different requirements and procedures. The programs that they are involved in have different objectives, targeted beneficiaries and eligibility requirements ranging from impoverished households or women or pastoralists to farmers of a particular crop. This plurality of actors encompassing multiple funders, implementors and intended beneficiaries creates lack of transparency, opaque lines of responsibility, and contradictory outcomes.

Additionally, there is lack of clarity as to which agency’s interpretation of land rights has ultimate authority. The Ministry of Lands holds national jurisdiction for land administration, which includes surveying, planning and formalization. It issues individual land titles, including CROs for urban parcels and large-scale rural holdings, as well as CCROs for rural parcels under the jurisdiction of village governments4. CCROs are only supposed to be issued after a village has been surveyed and registered with a VLC and has a VLUP, produced in coordination with District officials and the National Land Use Planning Commission [52]. If a land dispute arises when parcel boundaries are being formalized, village authorities typically try to resolve the matter. Should that fail, it is sent to the ward tribunal (with jurisdiction over 4–5 neighboring villages), and then to the relevant district tribunal overseen by the Ministry of Lands. A case may reach the High Court (Land Division) or Court of Appeal overseen by the Tanzanian Judiciary [53]. Meanwhile, the President’s Office (PO-RALG), has jurisdiction over local government decision-making and administration with appointed representatives in every village. Together with elected village leaders, these centrally appointed representatives register land sales, help resolve disputes and participate in village land use decisions.

Non-state actors also pursue formalization efforts by offering funding and technical assistance for land formalization programs that are administered by a range of government agencies. Despite attempts to coordinate aid in Tanzania, non-state-led land formalization programs reflect a wide range of approaches. The World Bank has been the largest funder, but the European Union (EU), Norwegian Development Agency (NORAD), Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO, formerly known as the Department for International Development, DFID) and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have been involved for a long time as well. Finally, both local and international NGOs also administer and fund land formalization activities. As stated above, our research found 53 registered NGOs working on land rights, but we believe there are many more working in other regions of the country.

3.2. Plural Programs, Procedures and Technologies

Pluralism also abounds amongst land formalization programs, procedures and technologies. Procedures pursued in areas that have seen multiple formalization programs often counteract those of previous programs. Some deal with land title formalization from a policy or educational perspective while others directly assist with village land certification, village land use planning, and/or distribution of CCROs. Still others are concerned with capacity building and technical assistance. Some limit their titling efforts to productive land (farm plots), whereas others try to safeguard people’s domiciles and only title their residences. Some programs are very limited, titling a selection of households in a village (“Spot” titling), while others aim to formalize every parcel (“Systematic” titling, also known as “comprehensive” titling). Funders tend to concentrate their efforts in particular regions, and this gets mirrored in the formalization programs they support. Additionally, a variety of technologies have been utilized, including aerial photomapping, surveyors, GPS technology, satellite imaging, crowd sourcing, mobile applications and drones. This diversity of approaches creates an on-the-ground complexity, exemplified in

Table 1. Examples of Land Formalization Programs.

Program Name	Land Management Program (LAMP)	Mbozi Pilot Project	Private Sector Competitiveness Project (PSCP)	Property and Business Formalization Program MKURABITA	Women’s Social and Economic Empowerment Program	Mobile Application to Secure Tenure (MAST)	Feed the Future Land Tenure Assistance (LTA)	Land Tenure Support Program (LTSP)	Land Tenure Improvement Project (LTIP)
Initial Year	1997	2002	2005	2006	2009	2014	2015	2016	2021
Donor or NGO	SIDA	European Union	World Bank	NORAD	Concern	USAID	USAID	DFID/FCDO DANIDA SIDA	World Bank
Lead Agency	Prime Minister’s Office	Ministry of Lands	Ministry of Lands	President’s Office	District Govt	Village Govt	Ministry of Lands	Ministry of Lands	Ministry of Lands
Type	Land use planning, Village certification, Spot titling	Village certification, Spot titling	Systematic titling	Spot titling	Spot titling	Spot titling	Spot titling	Systematic titling	Systematic titling
Technology	Surveyor, Aerial photos, GPS/GIS	Aerial photos, GPS/GIS	Satellite imaging	GPS/GIS	Surveyor	Crowd sourcing, Mobile app	Satellite Imaging, Mobile app	GPS/GIS	Drones, Mobile app

Source: Interviews and program documentation (see Appendix A Table A2 for additional information).

below, that has inhibited progress despite the allocation of large expenditures (Appendix A Table A2).

The variance in approaches leads to counterproductive and duplicative efforts in some villages and districts. For example, two of our case villages were included in the SIDA-funded Land Management Program (LAMP) in collaboration with the Ministry of Lands and local district government [54]. LAMP began in 1989 with a focus on natural resource management but in 1997 expanded to include land security by way of “surveying, border demarcation and mapping of village lands together with education activities to inform smallholders and pastoralists about their land rights” (ibid., p. 7). In 2006, the project surveyed and certified village boundaries for five villages securing VLCs and also piloted the issuance of CCROs through the surveying and titling of 70–100 plots per village (“spot titling”). The project was completed in 2008 [55]5. One year later, a World Bank-funded systematic formalization project was launched in the same district. Despite there being 95 villages in the district at that time, one of the five spot titling villages was selected to also be part of the World Bank project. All previously issued CCROs from the LAMP project were voided in order not to conflict with the generation of new CCROs using highly expensive satellite imaging [39,56]. Our other case village was not selected for the World Bank project, but all issued titles were also nullified due to numerous errors. Although we would learn from our interviews in the World Bank-surveyed villages that there were numerous errors in those as well, these have not been nullified. As one commentator notes, “the [PSCP] project was rushed through at the local level. The speed and the number of title deeds were the most important success criteria” [56], p. 186. Years after the PSCP program ended, we returned to find piles upon piles of rejected CCROs in village offices, gathering dust, not collected by their owners on account of errors and inaccuracies, or alternatively out of a fear that accepting them would generate an obligation to pay taxes7. Over time, the central focal point became the need to lower the cost of issuing each CCRO—though as we discuss below, the numbers that were generated were rather dubious. To quote the final report of the LTSP: “The Program supported the Government of Tanzania (GoT) to test different approaches to land titling tenure regularization in order to decrease the cost per title, and then roll out good practice across the country” [57] (p. 5).

Additionally, the splitting of villages into two or more villages is a common occurrence [52]. Population growth combined with a desire for self-determination has led numerous subvillages to break away from their mother villages and establish new villages. Our research confirms this, with 32 of the original 40 villages (80%) in our study reporting that they have experienced a split. Splitting appears to occur especially during election years when party politicians seek to bolster their ranks and create new administrative posts to be filled at the district and regional levels. However, when a new village is formed, the VLC of the original mother village becomes null and void. Although the Ministry of Lands imposed a moratorium on the splitting of villages [52], new villages continue to emerge. While the Minister of Lands reported a total of 12,318 villages in the May 2024 budget speech to Parliament, the May 2025 budget speech reported 12,333 villages—an increase of 15 villages despite the moratorium. Notably, local government elections took place in 2024 and national elections in 2025.

Splitting villages also nullifies a VLUP, rendering it “redundant,” according to the Director General of the National Land Use Planning Commission (DG), whom we interviewed in 20168. And because land use plans are extremely expensive to produce (costing anywhere from USD 3500 to USD 14,000 for a single VLUP) [52,57]9, progress has been slow and generates a lot of wasted resources when nullified.

Splitting villages may also undermine the validity of a CCRO. Some officials indicated CCROs would be automatically voided; others reported that an individual title could be amended. “CCROs are not necessarily rendered redundant unless the parcel was cut by the new village border. But it will need to be amended if a parcel falls in the newly created village with a new name. Amendments can be made at the district level”10.

Finally, some villages deemed densely populated have been or are being converted into “Planning Areas” for urban development, which accords them status as an emerging municipality. Over the period of our study, 9 of the 40 villages (~23%) experienced conversion to a planning area. This converts the land from being “Village Land” (governed by a village council) to “General Land” (governed by the central government), and again nullifies all VLCs, VLUPs and CCROs issued to the former villages/villagers. The DG explained, “If a village is moved into a planning area, they need detailed plans for that area, including zoning. Now town and district planners must go there for detailed service delivery mapping, since it no longer is a rural area. It must have town services. Existing rights cease to exist.” While he indicated that existing forms of ownership could still be recognized, what certainly changes is the use of land. Land ownership will need to be formally recognized with CROs, as opposed to the previous CCROs, which only apply to village land. Walwa confirms this and argues that a more dramatic shift occurs. He explains that “the Urban Land Planning Act (2007) does not recognize farms in urban areas. When a rural area is upgraded to a town, customary rights of occupancy cease…. [Because] the power and mandates of village councils are subordinated to the Commissioner of Lands, who is empowered by the Land Acts to overturn decisions of village and district councils on land allocation … holders of customary land rights easily lose their land when towns expand to village land—since they hardly have certified evidence to justify ownership of land” [58].

Together with the shift of large areas of village land into conservation with the creation of new, or expansion of existing, national parks and game reserves, and the appropriation of village land for private sector development of large-scale agribusiness investments, the central government has been quietly but steadily removing land from local control and increasing the amount of land under its jurisdiction [59,60]. Until recently, official statistics depicted village land as representing 70% of all land in mainland Tanzania (excluding Zanzibar), which aligned with the Shivji Commission recommendations to accord local village governments considerable authority over land matters, while reserved land and general land were estimated at 28% and 2%, respectively [61]. However, in the 2023 version of the National Land Policy, these figures were updated to: village land (57%), reserved land (33%) and general land (10%) [36] (p. 2). Perhaps closer to reality on the ground might be the figures offered by the government in the 2019 project completion report for the Land Tenure Support Program (LTSP) funded by DFID (now the FCDO), DANIDA, and SIDA that “9.6% of the land is general land; 39.9% is village land and 50.5% is reserved land” [57] (p. 66).

3.3. Plural Motivations

The stated motivations of actors and programs for pursuing land titling highlighted above range from reducing poverty to wildlife conservation, creating confusion and increasing vulnerability of many villagers, whether farmers or pastoralists. In our interviews with program coordinators and review of program documents, we found a plurality of objectives and their motivations for formalization advanced by government agencies, donors, and NGOs as noted below:

• Titling can increase the security of tenure by:
  • Offering protection against potential land-grabbing;
  • Improving agricultural productivity as it has been argued that low agricultural productivity is a consequence of tenure insecurity.
• Titling can reduce conflict by:
  • Clarifying ownership and boundaries.
• Titling can alleviate poverty by:
  • Securing the livelihoods of those who depend on land for subsistence;
  • Facilitating access to credit thereby enabling smallholders to launch new business activities or secure capital to further their agricultural activities.
• Titling can secure land rights for vulnerable groups including:
  • Women as a means of female empowerment;
  • Pastoralists and other Indigenous communities as a means to sustain their traditional ways of life.
• Titling can improve land market efficiencies by:
  • Facilitating sales and transfers;
  • Identifying land available for land-based investment.
• Titling can improve government’s functions and finances by:
  • Providing access to information about land ownership and land planning, thereby improving land administration;
  • Providing increased transparency as to who owns what and where, thereby improving governance over land;
  • Expanding the tax base so that the GoT may decrease its reliance on donor aid and loans and be more accountable to its citizens.
• Titling can protect the environment by:
  • Protecting natural resources from degradation and destruction, including water sources, wildlife, and environmental resources (ecological, vegetation, forests, marine);
  • Mitigating the effects of climate change by conserving forests and green spaces.

The objectives of titling programs are remarkably wide-ranging, from targeting the rural landowner at the local level, to rural land markets at the village, regional and national levels and even the governance of land at the federal level. Many NGOs typically focus on reducing poverty, improving women’s and pastoralists’ land rights and enhancing livelihoods, while the World Bank and the government typically focus on security, access to credit and improving the efficiency of the market. For example, Concern Worldwide, an Irish NGO focused on poverty alleviation, funded at least three different projects that included a land titling component: (1) the “Rights to Food and Land” program in 2005 in Iringa region, in which CCROs were almost entirely subsidized for 20 households in each of 32 selected villages; (2) a project in Kigoma region in 2012 providing land titles to female-headed households in 40 villages; and (3) a “Land Use” program in Kagera region assisting with the procurement of CCROs for some 1800 households. Another NGO, DONET (Dodoma Environmental Network), focused on environmental issues in Dodoma region. With funding from Norwegian Peoples’ Aid, DONET pursued village land use planning and land titling projects in three districts (Kongwa, Bahi and Chamwino); facilitated the preparation of 600 CCROs in each of four villages; conducted sensitization campaigns on women’s land rights in 50 villages across Dodoma region; and, with funding from Care International, pursued joint land use planning to protect pastoralist commons in Chemba district, Kondoa region. In contrast, the philosophy behind World Bank approaches to titling in Tanzania is predicated on the notion that when land rights are not clearly defined, individuals will be embroiled in conflict and will waste time defending their property or invest less productive labor than they would otherwise [39].

One might consider that such a multi-faceted approach to titling would have dramatic positive effects, as multiple aspects are addressed in bringing formalization to the rural landowner. However, this proliferation of actors, programs, technologies, objectives, and rationales not only fabricates disparate pathways to formalization but, importantly, also creates opportunities for those with the most resources to exploit the resultant ambiguity and generate rules, court cases, and precedents that benefit themselves or their constituencies despite the veil of other motivations. As stated by Holden & Otsuka, “more secure property rights and removal of restrictions on land markets have the potential to create both efficiency and equity benefits, but there are high risks of elite capture of large land areas with inefficient and inequitable outcomes” [62] (p. 88). Indeed, German quotes a World Bank report advocating titling as means of facilitating transfer to “those who can use it most productively” [7] (p. 72). How successful has formalization been and what does it mean for continued titling initiatives? We explore this in the next section.

3.4. Plurality in Achievements

Formalization of a rural household’s land parcel with a CCRO requires, in principle, the issuance of a VLC certifying village boundaries, completion of a VLUP to designate residential vs. agricultural vs. pasture vs. reserved land (e.g., water sources, village forests), and mapping of the parcel’s boundaries. Every year in May, ministers of every Tanzanian ministry report to Parliament on their achievements for the concluding fiscal year and present their budget request for the upcoming fiscal year. We have collected the budget speeches from successive ministers of Land, from May 2007 to May 2025. Each budget speech sets a target for the number of VLCs, VLUPs and CCROs to be issued in the upcoming fiscal year and reports on those issued in the previous fiscal year. We use information from budget speeches to assess the progress of national formalization efforts since the 2003/2004 fiscal year when the formalization program was launched [63] (p. 16).

The government has made significant progress in surveying and certifying village boundaries via the issue of VLCs. In his May 2025 budget speech to Parliament, current Minister of Lands Deogratius Ndejembi reported that out of 12,333 villages, VLCs had been issued for 10,987 villages (~88%) [64] (p. 24). This suggests an average of about 500 VLCs issued per year over the previous two decades. It further suggests that it will take less than three years to issue VLCs for the remaining 1346 villages. However, it could be longer since new villages are being created each year. Moreover, there is some question about the accuracy of already-issued VLCs. A team associated with the USAID’s Feed the Future Land Tenure Assistance Project (LTA) shared that “Between 2008 and 2010, village boundaries were hastily surveyed during an exercise to prepare VLCs throughout the country. Insufficient survey points were used to define accurate boundaries. As a result, most village boundaries as drawn on the maps accompanying VLCs do not accord with actual village boundaries” [52] (p. 7).

Nation-wide, village land use planning is moving more slowly, as would be expected since it entails engaging the entire village community in the process. According to then Minister of Lands Jerry Silaa, as of 15 May 2024 (the most recent figure available), 4126 (~33%) out of 12,318 villages had VLUPs [65] (p. 30). This represents nearly two decades of effort, initiated with the passing of the Land Use Planning Act of 2007 and the Village Land Act of 1999. Drawing on annual budget speeches, between 2010 and 2024, a combined target of 5829 VLUPS was set and 5046 (~87%) were completed. This suggests an average of about 252 VLUPs per year over the two decades since formalization began. Hence, it could take about 30 years to complete VLUPs for the remaining 7330 villages, or longer since new villages are being created each year. One benefit of VLUPs is that the process has to be pursued collectively with the entire adult population of the village required to vote on and approve it; another is that with clear designations of land use, conflicts ought to be minimized. Two disadvantages exist, however. The first is that there is currently no mechanism of enforcement for VLUPs, with responsibility for fulfilling it residing wholly with the village council, the composition of which can change from one election to the next. Secondly, a VLUP can be funded by external actors who have vested interests in the process and thus can serve as a vehicle for land dispossession. This has been reported by Walwa and by Engstrom et al., who report on elites capturing the land use planning process to advance their own interests [38,66]. We also found this in our fieldwork, with the case of an external investor paying for VLUPs in six villages where they sought large allocations of land (~45,000 hectares) for sugar production in what is a clear conflict of interest.

The progress of issuing CCROs is going much more slowly. This requires having committed village and district governments to manage the process, accessing adequate funding support, building a registry in each village to securely store the CCROs, surveying each parcel boundary, and securing approval of the boundaries from each neighbor and from representatives of the village government. Drawing on data presented in the annual budget speeches and the 2025 report of the Implementation Support Mission (ISM) for the Land Tenure Improvement Project LTIP (LTIP) [67,68] (Appendix A Table A3), we find that a combined total of 1,313,084 CCROs have been issued between 2006 and 2025, representing about 11% of all parcels, an approximation supported by a similar estimate from the 2020 nationally representative NPS11. This is an average of about 65,655 CCROs issued per year over the last two decades, and suggests that it will take over 160 years to complete titling of rural areas! The pace has, however, increased greatly in recent years with investments through external donor programs such as USAID’s LTA, the multilateral LTSP and the World Bank’s LTIP. For example, the LTIP registered a total of 347,387 CCROs over the three years of its program [67,68], and the Ministry of Land registered a notable 152,667 CCROs in 2025 [64] (p. 23).

Given the early cancellation of the LTIP and the end of USAID support, however, this recent increase in registrations is not likely to be sustained. In the case of the LTIP, which had a completion date of 31 January 2027, the initial funding was USD 150 million (Appendix A Table A2). Even though it was terminated on 30 June 2025—at the request of the GoT—and the undisbursed funding of USD 100 million was canceled [68], the amount that had been spent, USD 50 million, remains among the highest of all donor programs. At the time of writing, however, all externally funded projects have come to an end.

There is a history of setting unrealistic targets. Figure 2 shows targets, outcomes and achievement rates for the Ministry of Land between 2010 and 2025. Over this period, the achievement rate ranged from ~4% to ~96%. Generally, achievements of targets were high when the targets were low, and, conversely, achievements of targets were low when targets were high. For example, the Ministry target in 2024 was 520,000, and the number registered in 2025 was a notably high (in comparison to previous annual registrations) 152,667 CCROs, implying an achievement rate of ~29%. The LTSP targeted 287,000 CRCOs and registered 193,529 CCROs, while the LTIP targeted 550,000 (over three years) and as noted above, registered 347,387, resulting in achievement rates of about ~67% (LTSP) and ~63% (LTIP), respectively. Low achievement rates, especially when targets and funding resources are substantial, may be no more than a reflection of the enormity of the task of titling and its very costly nature.

In summary, the aim to title all of rural Tanzania is an enormous effort since, according to existing legislation, a CCRO can be issued only after meeting other administrative requirements, namely that the parcel is surveyed and the village has a VLC, VLUP, and a secure village registry. Our review of titling initiatives reveals that VLCs could be issued for all villages in Tanzania in less than three years, but it will take more than three decades to produce VLUPs for all villages and many more decades to formalize all rural parcels. One caveat about how long it will take to complete the formalization of rural land is that Tanzania is urbanizing very rapidly, with cities and towns expanding into rural areas [69]. This will reduce the percentage of rural land relative to urban land and thereby reduce the need for VLCs, VLUPs and CCROs (and as stated before, making existing ones null and void). Nevertheless, we expect that even with a reduction in rural land, there will be a large number of parcels that remain to be titled, many more than have been titled so far. Given how financially onerous the process is, titling is a policy with high opportunity costs for rural development. Moreover, great success at titling has hardly been a panacea. Between 2007 and 2013, Rwanda provided titles on 10 million parcels of land. However, the country saw no improvement in small-scale production between 2006/2007 and 2016/2017 [70]. As we have discussed elsewhere, this raises the question of the real purpose underlying titling efforts in Tanzania and in other African countries [71].

4. Tenuity of Titling Outcomes and the Rural Landowner

Irrespective of the difficulties in bringing CCROs to all rural Tanzania, how have formalization programs impacted the rural landowner who has participated in them? We return to where we began framing land formalization in the case of Tanzania as one of institutional pluralism wherein “the multitude of politico-legal institutions, each ‘issuing’ rules and principles, amplify the uncertainty of land rights” [46]. Following German, Odgaard, Li, Cleaver, Boone, Juul and Lund we argue that the proliferation of formalization programs in Tanzania has generated gaps and fissures in policy, in practice, and in outcomes that some individuals and social groups are able to exploit to their advantage [46,48,72,73,74,75]. How do the programs impact rural landowners and their environment? We specifically explore the following outcomes promised in the acquisition of a CCRO, items 1–4 from the list in Section 3.3 above: security of tenure, conflict reduction, poverty alleviation and improving the land rights of vulnerable groups, as reflected in our LRRL survey data.

4.1. Security of Tenure for Whom, and at What Cost?

Peters, Boone, and Amanor [22,24,48,76,77] persuasively argue that maneuverability is the preserve of elites and that titling programs “reveal the ability of the powerful to overcome even moderate local autonomy” [22] (p. 92). This explains why for all the rhetoric that formalization is a key tool in the fight against poverty, the program has been rolled out primarily in areas producing high-value cash crops like coffee (Mbozi district), rice (Babati and Mbarali districts), and sugar (Kilombero district). Elite agricultural interests, both domestic and international, we argue, are driving processes of land alienation as elites seek to secure their new appropriations of land from smallholders with formal title while masking the effort as one advancing smallholders’ interests [71]. If further proof were required, when asked about plans to title in a particular district known for high levels of poverty, an official in the Ministry of Lands replied that there would be no point in pursuing formalization in that district as “there is nothing there” and that the district was “dying a natural death.” He and other officials explained that only districts with high-value cash crops were selected for the World Bank pilot titling projects12. This is confirmed in an LTIP Project Appraisal Document, which prioritized the criteria of “economic potential, demand and readiness for land registration,” “potential or actual occurrence of land conflicts,” and “rural areas with high agricultural potential” for formalization efforts [78] (p. 12).

The data from our study supports the notion that more economically advantaged areas were selected for titling programs.

Table 2. Selected Village Characteristics by Type of Titling Initiatives.

	Total	None	Donor-Sponsored Initiatives		Self-Supported Initiatives
			Spot Coverage	Comprehensive Coverage
Number of Villages	40	21	6	8	5
Villages with, or adjacent to, large investment schemes (% of villages)	57.5%	47.6%	33.3%	75.0%	100%
Villages with a SACCO or VICOBA (% of villages)	47.5%	33.3%	66.7%	87.5%	20.0%

Source: LRRL survey data, Wave 1, collected 2010–2016.

shows two characteristics of our study villages that indicate economic advantage, the presence of investment projects and of savings institutions, categorized by type of household titling initiatives in Wave 1. These are grouped into none, donor-supported initiatives and self-supported initiatives. Donor-supported initiatives are further grouped by village coverage, spot titling (some households included) and systematic titling (all households included). A greater percentage of villages with systematic titling (~75%) were in the vicinity of large investment projects compared to villages with spot titling (~33%) or villages with no initiatives. The presence of savings institutions like Savings and Credit Cooperative Society (SACCO) or Village Cooperative Bank (VICOBA), a formal avenue for investment loans, was also greater among villages with systematic titling (~88%) compared to villages with spot titling (~68%) or those with no initiatives (~33%). Interestingly, the five study villages with self-supported initiatives were all in the vicinity of large investment schemes, and one of them had a savings institution.

Extraordinary levels of funding have been expended to make incremental progress. We identified 26 large-scale commitments to rural formalization programs totaling about USD 340 million since the initial EU investment in individualized titling in Mbozi district began in 2002 (Appendix A Table A2) and we strongly suspect there are additional programs and sources of funding we were unable to access. These commitments do not include any accounting of the cost of setting up and operating a separate land conflict resolution system. The total is also a conservative estimate because we were unable to locate actual commitment amounts from several NGOs, government agencies and bi-lateral donors whom we identified as pursuing titling activities. Over the same period, 962,370 CCROs were issued, according to the Ministry of Land’s 2023 update to the National Land Policy [36] (p. 4), which is 8% of the approximately 12 million customary parcels [68]. Based on the total amount spent or allocated for titling, we can make a back-of-the-envelope calculation and estimate that it cost USD 353 per title, about one and a half times the average monthly income for families in rural Tanzania in 202013. We have had access to financial details in other projects. For example, we estimated that the cost of the World Bank titling project in Bariadi and Babati was roughly USD 227 per title based on data obtained in 2010 [39]. Administrative costs for the LTSP project were not quite as high. While the managers claimed that they got the cost down to USD 10 per CCRO, this was only accomplished by leaving out all the fixed and administrative expenses. If we include the full cost of regularization plus the portion of the administration expensed going to regularization (roughly USD 9.3 million through September 2019) against a total of 127,031 issued to villagers, the real cost was USD 73 [57]. And these costs do not include potential individual costs such as the collection and maintenance of relevant documentation and the possible need to pay land taxes.

Is the high investment of financial resources that has been and is continuing to be poured into formalization efforts resulting in an acceptable level of CCRO acquisition? Information from our study villages in Wave 1 is quite revealing (

Table 3. Selected Household Characteristics by Type of Titling Initiatives.

	Total	None	Donor-Sponsored Initiatives		Self-Supported Initiatives
			Spot Coverage	Comprehensive Coverage
Number of Heads of Household (HH)	1510	760	257	292	201
Owned land (% of HH)	89.8%	87.9%	91.8%	94.5%	87.6%
Number of landowners with a CCRO	118	0	31	65	22
Percentage of landowners with a CCRO	6.4%	0.0%	9.4%	17.8%	10.1%
Median real (2019) annual imputed income per capita (USD) of landowners with a CCRO	$117.04		$73.61	$83.10	$202.82

Source: LRRL survey data, Wave 1, collected 2010–2016, and based on heads of household with information on ownership of land, imputed income and possession of a CCRO.

). Ownership of land by heads of household was generally high in all the villages, irrespective of presence of titling or type of titling initiatives, but somewhat higher in the villages with systematic titling initiatives. However, only about 6% of these landowners (118 out of 1510) had a CCRO. Of these, 19% (22) obtained their title through their own initiative, 26% (31) were in villages with spot titling initiatives, and 55% (65) were in villages with systematic titling initiatives [79]14. Thus a significant majority of households with CCROs (81%) obtained them through externally funded systematic titling programs which, due to the high costs involved, are difficult (and unlikely) to replicate for the 11,000+ villages without such programs.

Another way to understand this is that in villages with any presence of titling, the overall percentages of households with CCROs remain low. Since our aim was to investigate the effects of titling, we intentionally selected villages such that roughly half (19) featured some titling and roughly half (21) did not. This is likely not representative of the state of affairs on the ground, where a much smaller percentage of Tanzania’s 12,333 villages have households with CCROs. In our sample, the percentage of households with CCROs was: ~9% in villages with spot titling, ~10% in villages with self-titling, and ~18% in villages with systematic titling. While systematic titling doubles the achievement rate of spot titling, the figure of 18% should raise concern since systematic titling, which formalizes all parcels in a village, should result in a 100% CCRO possession rate in those villages.

Moreover, it is important to note that the median real annual imputed income per capita [80]15, was very much higher among CCRO holders in villages with self-titling initiatives (~USD 202) compared to villages with systematic titling (~USD 83) or spot titling (~USD 74). Given the estimated costs of regularization noted above (at least USD 73), clearly self-titling is possible only among those with a relatively high level of income.

Perhaps the investment by sponsored programs will show greater acquisition over time, but signs are not good with the early termination of the World Bank’s Land Tenure Improvement Program (LTIP) mentioned above. Our Wave 2 data from about 5 to 8 years later shows that the rate of acquisition overall had indeed increased to ~11%, close to the 2020 figure of ~11% for Rural Tanzania cited above. However, this growth in CCRO possession across time is so slow (about 4% over 5 to 8 years) that it calls into question the feasibility of providing long-term support to titling initiatives on a broader scale across rural Tanzania.

4.2. Impact of Formalization on Insecurity and Conflict

Perhaps the costs, opportunity costs, time and labor that universal titling requires would be worth it if households that have acquired CCROs experience less land conflict. Instead, as observed below, it is not just CCRO holders who are exposed to the potential for conflict and insecurity. The process of issuing paper title deeds itself has spawned disagreements due in part to the falsification and multiple allocation of deeds. Indeed, land disputes have been on the rise within the court system. In August 2014 it was reported that 20 new judges had to be appointed to the High Court Land Division due to the escalating number of land-related conflicts flooding the judicial system [81]. Then Chief Justice Othman Chande admitted that land disputes constituted the largest type of cases besieging the judicial system, with 850 cases reported annually on top of a backlog of ~1500 cases. He moreover stated that “Most reported cases include those with more than one title deed issued… on a single earmarked plot” (ibid.). Two years later, it was reported that in Arusha region alone, there were 884 pending disputes due to staff shortages, and this figure excluded data from two districts especially notorious for land disputes [82]. A similar number was reported in May 2023 for just Dodoma region, where 815 disputes were registered in court [83].

Formalization advocates have argued that titling strengthens security of tenure to improve productivity. This, however, presumes that (1) many households are insecure and fearful of losing their landholdings, and (2) their productivity is lower than it would be if they had a title. Setting aside the erroneous assumption that rural Africans are not working as hard as they possibly can to extract the greatest amount of value from their land, levels of tenure insecurity vary considerably and correlate with specific factors rather than being a universal condition of the rural poor. Furthermore, as Tanzania develops, village land will shrink as rural land may be used for large investments, absorbed into conservation areas or converted to planning areas (becoming townships), changing village land to general land. Villagers may lose land to these projects, and in the case of CCRO holders, their certificates may be voided if village boundaries change.

Our data from Wave 1 provide insights into these issues (

Table 4. Insecurity and Conflict by CCRO Possession.

	No CCRO	CCRO	Total
Number of Heads of Household (HH)	1298	100	1398
Felt insecure (% of HH)	43.1%	27.0%	41.9%
Was involved in a land conflict (% of HH)	18.0%	8.0%	17.3%
Felt CCRO has not improved life (% of HH)		65.3%
Number of HH who felt insecure	559	27	586
Worried about government takeover (% of those who felt insecure)	53.7%	74.1%	54.6%
Lived in village with large investments inside or outside    (% of those who felt insecure)	64.8%	70.4%	65.0%
Lived in village with designated conservation sites inside or outside village    (% of those who felt insecure)	84.4%	100%	85.2%

Source: LRRL survey data, Wave 1, collected 2010–2016, and based on heads of household with information on possession of a CCRO, insecurity and conflict.

). When heads of household were asked, “Are you worried about somebody taking your land or losing it in some other way?”, CCRO holders were less likely to be insecure, with about a fifth (~27%) of CCRO holders responding “yes”, much lower than the percentage (~43%) of non-CCRO holders. CCRO holders were also less likely (~8%) to be involved in a land conflict compared to non-CCRO holders (~18%). This is to be expected as a CCRO is issued only after boundary-related disputes are settled, and so any land conflict is likely due to reasons other than the CCRO, whereas non-CCRO holders may experience conflict from such issues. Yet, more than half (~65%) of CCRO holders did not agree that having a CCRO had improved their lives. This is somewhat surprising since, examining this group further, more than half of them had held their CCROs for two or more years, a reasonable time to use the CCRO, for example, to get access to loans for investment. Considering just the respondents who reported feeling insecure, the most cited reason was government takeover, with a greater percentage of CCRO holders being concerned (~74%) than non-CCRO holders (~54%). Moreover, a higher proportion of CCRO holders compared to non-CCRO holders lived in villages that had or were near large investment schemes (~70% vs. ~65%) or had conservation sites within or adjacent to the village (100% vs. ~84%).

In summary, having a CCRO, while providing a sense of security, is likely to also increase fear of loss of land. Our interviews indicated that conflict with powerful government neighbors or large-scale investors (who secured government approval and support to access land), and concern about land, was a feature of daily life generating higher levels of insecurity. Sometimes village boundaries were unclear, and a villager could lose some or all of their land when a title is finalized. Of the 33 heads of household who reported having no land at the time of the survey but who had it previously, almost half (~48%) explained their land had been taken away, as opposed to selling their land (~21%) or other reasons including giving their land to their children (~31%). Interestingly and in contrast, respondents feeling secure reported that they felt so because their local village authorities knew them and recognized their ownership rights, affirming the strength of and trust in local institutions.

4.3. Formalization and Poverty Alleviation

Poverty alleviation is often cited as an important motivation for titling. As summarized above, de Soto argues that poor people have assets, including land, that they cannot tap because they are not legally recognized [14]. Security from titling would motivate increased work effort and investment in the land. By contrast, lack of property rights recognition impedes the ability to rent out or sell land and raises the cost of defending ownership of the land, thereby constraining income. Correspondingly, titling is expected to improve the incomes of those who depend on land for subsistence. In an earlier analysis of our data across both waves, we found that most households that had a CCRO in both Waves were not poor [80]. This was in line with literature that has shown that CCROs, given the costs, favor the wealthy [30,79,84,85]. While a few households that gained a CCRO were poor, it is likely that their acquisition of a CCRO was the result of external titling efforts. The results further showed that holding a CCRO across time did not preclude a household from remaining poor or becoming poor, as other proximate factors, such as prices, market access and weather, rather than formal possession of a title, affect income.

Titling is also seen as facilitating access to credit, thereby providing the poor with a way to secure that credit for business activities or agricultural inputs. Mitchell, however, reviewed the data from de Soto’s own experiment with titling in his homeland of Peru and found that titles did not facilitate access to credit for the poor but did correlate with longer working hours and fewer hours spent working in the home. While de Soto’s defenders attribute this to homeowners being more productive because of feeling more secure and able to leave their home without fear of losing it, Mitchell noted that the surveys were conducted during the second half of the 1990s, a period of sharp economic decline when people likely had to take on additional jobs to make ends meet [86]. We used our data to explore the use of CCROs for credit. An earlier analysis based on data from 30 villages pointed to the scarce use of CCROS as collateral, and further that farmers faced barriers to entry to the financial system [87]. As we shall see, the increase in observations from 40 villages in Wave 1 did not lead to improvements in credit access.

A villager needs to have a formal savings account to access a loan with collateral, and as we had noted in Table 2, only about half of our villages (~48%) had a Village Cooperative Bank (VICOBA) or Savings and Credit Cooperative (SACCO).

Table 5. Access to Credit by CCRO Possession.

	No CCRO	CCRO	Total
Number of Heads of Household (HH)	1310	92	1402
Had a Savings Accounts (n, % of HH)	181 (13.8%)	29 (31.5%)	210 (15.0%)
Had a loan from a savings institution (n, % of savings account holders)	63 (34.8%)	16 (55.2%)	79 (37.6%)
Used collateral (n, % of loan recipients)	45 (71.4%)	14 (87.5%)	59 (74.7%)
Used loan for agricultural investment (n, % of loan recipients)	14 (22.2%)	7 (43.8%)	21 (26.6%)
Used CCRO as collateral (n, % of loan recipients)		1 (6.2%)	1 (1.2%)

Source: LRRL survey data, Wave 1, collected 2010–2016, and based on heads of household with information on possession of a CCRO and a savings account.

shows that very few households in Wave 1 interact with formal credit institutions, be it a formal bank, SACCO or VICOBA. Less than a fifth (~15%) of our heads of household had a savings account, with a much greater percentage observed for CCRO holders (~32%) compared to non-CCRO holders (~14%). A very small number of households were accessing formal credit: 79 households out of 1402, or 5.6%. CCRO holders with savings accounts were more likely to get loans (~55%), almost all of whom (~88%) used collateral, compared to non-CCRO holders (~35% and ~71%, respectively). CCRO holders were also more likely (~44%) compared to non-CCRO holders (~22%) to get loans for agricultural investment. And of the 59 households that used some form of collateral to secure the loan, only 1 out of the 14 with a CCRO used their CCRO as collateral. Even then, the loan was not for agricultural investment but for education. This respondent had recently received their CCRO through a government-led systematic titling initiative.

In summary, the CCRO holders who did get collateral-based loans from savings institutions for agricultural investment did not use their CCRO for this purpose16. As observed in Section 4.1 above, the vast majority of CCRO holders (~88%) in our study obtained their formal titles as part of a titling initiative, and not through their own effort. Only 22 households (~12%) obtained a CCRO through their own effort and expense, but even they did not use it as collateral. Our interviews also confirmed that many institutions were reluctant to grant loans based on CCROs as collateral due to difficulties in selling village land if the loan recipient defaults or to uncertainty of tenure if these titles are voided when villages are split up or the land is taken over by the government—a problem we noted earlier.

4.4. Titling and Protecting Women’s and Pastoralists’ Rights to Land

It is also believed that titling improves the rights of certain groups that experience social and economic exclusion. Our data allows us to explore this for two groups of heads of household: women and pastoralists.

Understanding the gendered impact of titling extends well beyond equality in having or obtaining a CCRO. Under the Land Act No. 4 of 1999, both spouses, or both recognized occupiers of a parcel (even if not formally married), have rights to their shared land. But once a title is issued in the name of only one spouse or occupier, the other loses all rights to the land. We explore this using information provided by 457 heads of household in Wave 1 on land ownership and marital status, as well as CCRO details for the 77 heads of household (17%) that reported having a CCRO (

Table 6. Land Ownership, CCRO Possession, Marital Status and Photos on CCRO Titles by Gender.

	Female	Male	Total
Number of Heads of Household (HH)	134	323	457
Owns land (% of HH)	87.3%	91.6%	90.4%
Had a CCRO (% of landowning HH)	17.2%	16.7%	16.9%
Number with a CCRO	23	54	77
Single (% of CCRO holders)	00%	2 3.7%	2 2.6%
Currently married (% of CCRO holders)	6 26.1%	52 96.3%	58 75.3%
Separated, divorced or widowed (% of CCRO holders)	17 73.9%	00%	17 22.1%
Photo of owner only (% of CCRO holders)	12 52.2%	28 51.9%	40 52.0%
Photos of owner and spouse (% of CCRO holders)	10 43.5%	24 44.4%	34 44.2%
Photos of owner and spouse, and son or father (% of CCRO holders)	1 4.4%	2 3.7%	3 3.9%

Source: LRRL survey data, Wave 1, collected 2010–2016, and based on heads of household with information on possession of a CCRO, marital status and details on the CCRO document.

). Less than a third (~29%) of these 457 heads of the household were female.17 Female-headed households were almost as likely (~87%) as male-headed households (~92%) to own their land, and female heads of household were just as likely as male heads of household to have a CCRO (~17% for both groups). However, while it might seem that opportunities to have a CCRO are similar between male-headed households and female-headed households, reviewing marital status and names/photos on titles is revealing. About a quarter (~26%) of the 23 female heads of household who had CCROs were currently married, in contrast to almost all (~96%) of the 52 male heads of household with CCROs. The great majority of female heads of household were widowed, separated or divorced (~74%), and none were single, while the remaining two male heads of household not currently married were single (4%).

According to our data, of the 77 out of 457 household heads18 that reported having a CCRO, 37 (48%, nearly half the sample) reported including their spouse on the title deed. Of the remaining 40 respondents, 12 were women without spouses, and the other 28 (36%) were men with spouses. Titling effectively dispossessed those wives of their rights to their jointly occupied land. Although the government and donor community have encouraged that CCROs be granted in the name of all spouses, our data further confirms findings that this is not the norm. In our Wave 2 data that had 91 CCROs, a higher percentage (~40%) excluded the names of female spouses. This finding accords with other research reported in formalization project documents that depict a trend of men excluding their wives from CCROs, which effectively dispossesses them of rights they had held as occupiers of the land prior to the issuance of the CCRO [56,57,88,89,90]19.

With regard to titling and the rights of pastoralists, the primary economic activity in our study was farming, with pastoralists constituting only about ~8% of the sample. In Tanzania, pastoralism is pursued primarily by Indigenous minority groups, including Maasai, Barabaig, and Taturu. Pastoralists were much less likely (~11%) compared to farmers (~53%) to be in a village that had spot, systematic or self-titling initiatives (

Table 7. CCRO Possession by Primary Economic Activity.

	Farmers	Pastoralists	Others ^	Total
Number of Heads of Household (HH)	1394	121	50	1565
Lived in a village with self, spot or comprehensive titling    (n, % of HH)	742 (53.2%)	13 (10.7%)	22 (44.0%)	777 (49.7%)
Owned land (% of HH)	89.9%	89.3%	78.0%	89.5%
Number of landowners	1253	108	39	1400
Had a CCRO (n, % of landowners)	98 (7.8%)	1 (0.9%)	2 (5.1%)	101 (7.2%)

Source: LRRL survey data, Wave 1, collected 2010–2016, and based on heads of household with information on possession of a CCRO. ^ Others are those engaged in small businesses, formal occupations, landlords or casual work.

). However, they were equally likely (~89%) as farmers (~90%) to own land. Nevertheless, only one of the 108 pastoralists (~1%) had a CCRO compared to 98 of the 1253 farmers (~8%). The opportunities to get a CCRO, which were in villages with self, spot or systematic titling, were much lower for pastoralists. Nevertheless, in the one village where a pastoralist had a CCRO, there was only one other person, a farmer, with a CCRO.

In summary, the stated goal of several NGOs and donors actively promoting formalization efforts in Tanzania is to support the land rights of women, pastoralists and hunter-gatherers—communities that are recognized as being more vulnerable and subject to discrimination on multiple levels. Yet our data supports other findings that they are not emerging as key beneficiaries, and worse yet, are being harmed by formalization, which consistently benefits other, more privileged, populations [88,91]. This was reinforced in an interview we had with the head of the National Land Use Planning Commission, cited earlier, who explained that “when land is conceived of as a family or clan resource, men do not put wives on title… So there is a divide between the law and the practice of the law”20.

4.5. Formalization’s Opportunity Costs

This review of the promises of titling initiatives to rural landowners shows the tenuity of the outcomes. There are gains in acquisition of CCROs, but the growth is slow and costly. Then, it is unclear whether CCRO holders have benefited. While they feel more secure, they are also more likely to fear that the land will be taken away. Having a CCRO does not prevent CCRO holders from becoming poor; they face barriers in using their CCRO as collateral. Moreover, vulnerable populations among landowners such as women and pastoralists stand to lose existing land rights, with titling emerging a mechanism of dispossession.

The funding burden for the state is high. For instance, in the 2018–2019 budget, the total allocation of spending for agriculture was TZS 100.3 bn or TZS 8357 per parcel of land (12 million parcels). At an exchange rate in June 2018 (TZS 2280 per USD), this amounts to USD 3.67 per parcel of land, just ~1% of the rough cost per title based on funding commitments to titling programs of USD 353 cited above. This not only reflects the amount of funding that will need to be found by the state but, importantly, also indicates the enormous potential for alternative investments. The distribution of actors making commitments and the total commitment amount and cost per CCRO all beg the question of opportunity costs, i.e., what could have been funded in place of titles.

An intimation of this is provided by our villagers’ views on government investment.

Table 8. Ranking of Perceived Importance of Most Beneficial Government Investment.

Sector	Rank					Mean	Median
	1	2	3	4	5
Water	46%	19%	13%	12%	10%	2.2	2.0
Health	19%	34%	24%	16%	6%	2.6	2.0
Education	11%	19%	33%	26%	10%	3.0	3.0
Roads	9%	16%	18%	29%	27%	3.5	4.0
Titling	14%	11%	11%	17%	46%	3.7	4.0

Source: LRRL survey data, Wave 1, collected 2010–2016 and based on the views of 1453 heads of households who provided responses to all five sectors. Maximum values for each sector highlighted in grey.

shows the ranking of preferences by ~1450 heads of households for five different government investment programs ordered by mean and median rank. Significantly, rural smallholders themselves indicate their strong preference for support in other sectors, such as water, healthcare and education, over titling. Water was ranked as the most important by just under half the respondents (~ 46%), a percentage almost double that for the next favored government investment, health (~20%). Titling was ranked least important by, again, almost half of the respondents (~46%).

Given the high costs and the slow pace of issuing CCROs, many of which may be subsequently rendered null and void because of villages splitting or being transformed into planning areas, the clear implication is that continued titling is a long-term and exorbitantly expensive task. It is a development initiative that is not only not perceived by rural folk as improving their lives but also less valued than investments in water, health, education and roads.

5. Conclusions

Government-issued title deeds are viewed as the solution to all rural development problems since current paradigms link poverty and low agricultural productivity to legal disempowerment [14]. That rural smallholders are excluded from the rule of law by virtue of not having their rights to land legally affirmed is deemed a major cause of smallholders’ impoverishment. Hence, according to the reigning theory of change, “the remedy is a transformation of society including comprehensive legal, political, social and economic reforms whereby the poor are legally empowered …. With the rule of law working for all members of society, all individuals can theoretically reach their full potential as economic actors, and resources will be allocated with maximum efficiency. This provides the poor with the opportunity to work their way out of poverty” [92] (p. 193).

Essentially shifting the burden of alleviating poverty onto the poor themselves, proponents of formalization need to reconsider once again the original theoretical apparatus that supports the legal empowerment agenda, as well as the decades of development analysis and experience prior to 1997 that advocated a broad integrated approach to rural development and eschewed exclusive focus on land tenure reform. Although the agenda in Tanzania has been reduced to land rights formalization and little more, one finds embedded within its rhetoric a recognition of the need for a multi-sector approach entailing not myopic attention to legal rights but that in combination with political, social and economic reforms. Let us recall that customary land rights in Tanzania, including those of women and pastoralists, were given legal recognition in the absence of formal title by the Land Act No. 4 and Village Land Act No. 5, but most actors pursue titling as though this were not the case. The fetishization of individual formal title—ascribing to it instantaneous, multiple and almost miraculous positive impacts on beneficiaries—has reduced property rights formalization to a creed. This also ignores the context of widespread corruption in Tanzania, which greatly undermines the veracity of formal title since paper documents can be forged, falsified or multiply allocated21. This in turn leads to continually rising levels of land-related conflicts, as indicated by the high number of land-related disputes in the court system involving multiple title deeds.

The rush for individual titling has drawn resources and attention away from the importance of preparing land use plans for a village. In many places, the issuance of individual titles has commenced without properly produced VLUPs, despite this being a stated prerequisite of titling. This has had serious implications, especially for pastoralists, who have seen their grazing areas appropriated, partitioned and redistributed as individually titled farms, not to mention the recent spate of wholesale evictions in Loliondo, Ngorongoro and Mbeya [93,94,95,96]. Our research indicates that the value of VLUPs is more positive as compared to the value of individual titles and that efforts should be focused on ensuring that villages are guided through all stages of the land use planning process. Moreover, the anticipation that titling would greatly improve women’s rights to land has not been realized. Since a significant majority of men refuse to include their wives on their title deeds, titling in fact usurps the rights of women by shifting ownership to whoever is named on the title deed. It thus becomes a means of dispossessing women of rights they held prior to formalization [7,88].

Seen by many as a silver bullet solution to poverty, but in fact furthering inequality, individual titling has thus come with high financial and social costs. It is time to reconsider this policy choice and discern the inequities that institutional pluralism/assemblage/bricolage spawns. Through the processes of formalization, many people are left out and left worse off than they were before the introduction of titling. As we saw above, women and pastoralists are key examples of this. In short, we argue that formalization is not proving to be the vehicle for poverty reduction that many had hoped it would be. The proliferation of programs ignores that the greater constraints on agricultural productivity are poor infrastructure provision, lack of access to agricultural inputs and extension services, limited storage facilities, declining water resources, and declining soil fertility, all coupled with rapidly growing populations and increasing threats from climate change. Far more worrying is the growing evidence that formalization is not contributing to poverty reduction but is instead facilitating socioeconomic differentiation and class formation [97]. Moreover, formalization is occurring in tandem with the nationalization of land. As reported above, the government has acknowledged that the percentage of village land, which is governed by democratically elected village councils, has dropped significantly from 70% to 57% [36]. Large amounts of land are being transferred out of the village land category to general land (leased to investors and converted into planning areas) and reserved land (via expanded conservation areas), both of which are managed by the central government.

Peters persuasively argues that:

Contrary to the simple notions of aid agencies that see ‘insecurity of land tenure’ and ‘lack of clarity of property rights’ as the obstacles to increased production and to ‘development’ more broadly, the vast majority of rural producers in Africa are stymied by the loss of government-subsidized and managed programs of input delivery, credit, and other extension and market services, and by the overwhelming inequality faced by most African products in world markets…. ‘property rights’ to land without the means to use land productively is “a sick joke… because they lack the basic capital resources, and their social rights are being whittled away all the time” [22].

(p. 95, citing Chris Hann [98]; see also [97] pp. 56, 59)

If donors, government agencies and NGOs are sincere in their stated desires to alleviate poverty and advance the interests of rural smallholders, it is long past time to shed the obsession with the formal title and instead return to a broad multi-sector approach by providing the agricultural support, inputs and services that can secure land-based livelihoods in rural Tanzania. It is also time to recognize that the embeddedness of land relations in wider sociocultural and economic relations is the norm in Africa and other parts of the world and can offer considerable security of tenure, as shown by our data.