Focus on Land in Africa Brief

In Mali, many of the urban poor face tenure insecurity which leaves
them vulnerable to expropriation, landlessness and poverty. This
insecurity is perpetuated by two distinct but interrelated issues. First,
a scarcity of affordable land in urban areas forces the poor to illegally
squat on public land or to enter into informal land use agreements
with traditional authorities on the urban periphery. Second, land
formalization processes are expensive and accessible to only a few, leaving
many of the poor vulnerable to government expropriation. These issues
– aided by corruption, cronyism in land allocation and opaque and
expensive land registration processes – have fueled tenure insecurity for
the majority of the urban poor in Mali.