From policy to institution: Implementing land reform in Dar es Salaam’s unplanned settlements

Tanzania led the wave of land reform in sub-Saharan Africa, promoting ‘institutional fixes’ property rights to stimulate urban development and poverty alleviation. Since 2005, Residential Licence programme has offered short-term leases around 180,000 households unplanned settlements Dar es Salaam. However, rate title acquisition been moderate low, as much Africa. To understand demand for titles, this paper adopts an institutional approach a novel analytic framework examining social expectations their effects on choices formalisation. Primary data was collected through two-round survey with 1363 243 respondents, respectively. The finds that landholders have conditional preferences formalisation based behaviour neighbours advice other landholders, local leaders higher-level government. Interactions between state non-state actors generate compliance is low government not committed enforcing interim rights. These beliefs discourage transform into ‘empty’ institution, which fails embed practice. study contributes literature tenure by interaction forces implementation proposing complex understanding formalisation, underpinned collective choice considerations. Additionally, offers methodological contribution adopting method analysis further potential applications studies geographic research.