Community-Based Settlements Regularization: Lessons for Scaling up from Makongo Juu Informal Settlement, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Abstract

Given the need to scale the regularization of the many informal areas growing rapidly in African cities, this paper presents the experience, from efforts to regularize a mixed household income and mixed land use unplanned area called Makongo Juu in Dar es Salaam City, Tanzania. Realising the need to plan this area, the government prepared a number of land use plans which were however, not accepted by the landowners, asking permission to prepare their own. The first community - based plan of the mid-1990s took long to be approved and was overtaken by events. In 2015 the government tasked land owners to come up with an acceptable land use plan, which landowners, working within a community organization, did, and which was approved in 2017. The strengths of this approach included an acceptance by most of the landowners, who contributed in both cash in kind to the preparation of a land use plan, which, after approval, enabled the surveying of the area and of issuing titles. Weaknesses included failure to consider public goods such as the environment and public spaces. Planned neighbourhood roads, which were in any case, not standard, remained in private hands, uncleared and unsecured. It is concluded that government regulation is necessary, even in the case of a community-based regularization scheme, with enforceable provisions made, for regularization and post - planning transactions.