Community-based tenure reform in urban Africa: The community land trust experiment in Voi, Kenya

The continued growth of informal settlements constitutes one of the greatest urban development problems affecting African cities. Projects intended to upgrade these settlements have not been highly successful. In Kenya, project beneficiaries receiving land under individual titles sell or lose their land rights. This transfer of property is seen as stimulating informal settlement construction and growth. This paper reviews the use of a community-based land tenure form in an upgrading project in Voi, Kenya. The paper presents the rationale for using community tenure and discusses whether the upgrading approach/tenure form provides a replicable model for informal settlement upgrading.