Growing Cities in Sub‐Saharan Africa: Land Competing Interests in Peri‐Urban Areas and Organised Violence

Abstract

Competing interests over land are sharply rising worldwide; they are pushed by several factors, including peri-urban dynamics and growing commercialisation of land. Through a quasiexperimental design based on spatially disaggregated data, the analysis explores the effect of peri-urbanisation processes and large-scale land acquisitions on the risk of organised violence. The results, confirmed throughout several model specifications and robustness checks, provide evidence that peri-urbanisation processes are strongly associated with a higher risk of experiencing events of organised violence. The likelihood of being the arena of such events is even higher when large acquisitions are concluded within peri-urban areas. Urbanisation processes and large land acquisitions should therefore be framed within a comprehensive strategy grounded on inclusive urban planning and land access safeguards, in order to minimise the risk that land access insecurity may be translated into violence.

Urban Transformations and Land Governance in Peri‐Urban Khartoum: The Case of Soba

“…As in other African cities (see Balestri ), peri‐urban areas have been the cradle for slum development and informal settlements. In Arabic, these informal settlements are called ashwaeyat , which literally means ‘randomly built housing’, or the occupation of land without permission to live there or to build.…”

“…Researchers from the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) have defined land governance as ‘the rules, processes and structures through which decisions are made about access to land and its use, the manner in which the decisions are implemented and enforced, the way that competing interests in land are managed’ (Palmer et al ). In a peri‐urban context, we can see that different governance structures overlap and that urban expansion is often very chaotic, because powerful plans to restructure these transition zones are often lacking (Balestri ). Due to institutional fragmentation, legal pluralism and overlapping jurisdictions (Evers & de Vries ; Ros‐Tonen et al ), hybrid approaches arise to deal with the different socio‐economic developments and the heterogeneity of land dynamics in these territories.…”

Geographies of peri‐urbanization in the global south

“…and has shown that the transforming governance/institutional framework is often marked by sectorial approaches, overlapping jurisdictions, legal pluralism, regulatory confusion, and institutional gaps (Allen, 2014; Friedmann, 2016; Ros‐Tonen et al., 2015; Sawyer, 2014). Recently, studies have focused on aspects of governance, including: land (Balestri, 2019; Jensen et al., 2019; Labbé, 2016; Myers, 2008; Narain, 2009; Shatkin, 2016; Sood, 2021; Trefon, 2009; Zhu, 2013), water (Adams & Zulu, 2015; Aguilar & López, 2009; Allen et al., 2017; Butsch et al., 2021; Hui & Wescoat, 2019; Narain & Singh, 2019; Sreeja et al., 2017), and the connections between land and water (Bartels et al., 2018; Narain, 2014; Sreeja et al., 2017; Vij et al., 2018). …”

“…land (Balestri, 2019; Jensen et al., 2019; Labbé, 2016; Myers, 2008; Narain, 2009; Shatkin, 2016; Sood, 2021; Trefon, 2009; Zhu, 2013),…”