For Africa, the twenty-first century promises a squarely urban future. At the turn of the new Millennium, according to the Africapolis database, just under a third of the continent’s population lived in towns and cities; by 2025, this had risen to 57%; and by 2040, it is projected to reach 62%. Africa is adding tens of thousands of residents to its cities daily, each of them aspiring to the step-change in life chances that urbanisation has produced elsewhere: in Europe and North America in the nineteenth century, and in Asia in the twentieth.
Perhaps above all, cities are the frontier between ways of life. It is on their streets, in their densely packed settlements and tenements, and in their offices, factories and markets that not only are new opportunities and modes of livelihood created, but new societal systems and mindsets are cultivated. In Africa’s cities, for millions of people, this frontier must concern itself with the question of property rights.
Across the world, home ownership is the foundation of personal and inter-generational wealth. A residence is typically the most valuable asset that any individual or family will ever acquire. It represents not only the acquisition of a parcel of land or structure at a given time, but its upkeep over time, its extension and upgrading, and the appreciation in value that urban development brings. Not only is a home a shelter, but it is an investment. Opening a door to an urban household is potentially to open a door to a new level of modernity.
To get a sense of this, Africa in Fact reached out to Jessica Montgomery, Associate Professor of Finance at the University of Kentucky. She has done extensive research into the question of property ownership in varying contexts. “In all the research that’s been done, across the world”, she says, “by and large there are some connecting threads, even if there are variations due to cultural differences and national specificities. Owning homes and property has a big effect on investment incentives, especially in respect of the home itself. It raises the standard of living. It enhances tenure security. There is also evidence that it is good for the education children receive. Plus, it has a positive impact on local housing markets; properties are just worth more and can be sold to new entrants.”
Aspiration rather than reality
For millions of Africans, this is more aspiration than reality – and sometimes not even a realistic aspiration. Formally registered property is the experience of a minority on the continent. While information is scanty and uneven, a statistic used by World Bank economists reveals that no more than about 25% of urban land (and 10% of rural land) is formally registered and owned.
African land and property ownership is a patchwork of systems. Many of Africa’s oldest cities were products of the colonial era and were seen as oases of European administration. Here, property in land reflected the perspectives of the respective colonial power. Such systems would embody formal, registered title. The indigenous population would generally hold property under customary systems overseen by traditional leaders: a system geared towards a rural population, although as cities expanded, the jurisdictions frequently overlapped. In some places, this was further complicated by the existence of Islamic customs. And as urbanisation progressed – during and after the colonial period – an inexorable movement to the cities meant that millions of people were living without formal or enforceable rights, although their actual tenure security varied widely from one place to another, depending on social mores and community recognition.
The consequences of this go beyond individual households’ wealth generation and tenure security. “The potential of Africa’s cities is locked up in an inappropriate property system. Across the continent, irrespective of different colonial legacies, city structures and challenges are the same. This stands as testimony to the power of land markets irrespective of centrally planned forces trying to achieve predetermined outcomes,” says Dr Burgert Gildenhuys. He is one of South Africa’s foremost experts on urban planning and local governance, and he has extensive experience across the continent as well.
“There is an economic logic,” he continues. “All actors are looking for the biggest value per square metre. So, businesses pay more and may displace residential users. It is called the land bid rent theory. People don’t like the outcome, so the state tries to manipulate it. But the irony is that we’ve ended up with the opposite, overcrowding building in a CBD, and cities keep on sprawling because government subsidises transport. Abuja in Nigeria was imagined in the 1970s as a masterplan for African cities. After strict control of the inner-city development, around 17 satellite towns (about 3 million people) emerged, against 1.7 million people in the ‘planned’ city.”
Land markets
In the absence of proper land markets and the stable ownership regime that a stable and consistent system of property rights makes possible, the future for the continent’s cities is likely to be ongoing informality, marked by exclusion and insecurity. Under such conditions, the continent’s cities will never become the engines of growth and development that those elsewhere have been.
This is true even in the continent’s more exceptional jurisdictions. South Africa is in many respects the continent’s pathfinder for urban modernity. Not only are we two-thirds urbanised (a proportion that is rapidly increasing), but SA has a lengthy urban history, and a long-established and sophisticated system of urban administration.
This is misleading. Policy in the pre-democratic era created enormous urban sprawl to segregate communities. There had also been official resistance to acknowledging the permanence of Africans in the cities. Outside certain pockets, Africans were prohibited from owning landed property well into the 1980s. Housing was rented from municipalities on the understanding that residents would ultimately return to their ethnic reserves. And state policy aside, s steady flow of migration produced growing informal settlements. The hangover of this is that millions of South Africans lack formal property rights, even to homes their families have lived in for generations. Information on this is sketchy, but Lightstone, a real-estate consultancy, has estimated that for each titled property in the country, there are 2.5 without title. And according to the country’s minister of Human Settlements, by early 2026, some 1.2 million houses supplied by the state have not been formally transferred to the owners.
Those without formal title lack full legal protection to their holdings. This excludes them from access to the formal financial system. GG Alcock, doyen of South Africa’s informal economy, has pointed out that some 90% of the country’s homes are constructed without formal credit. It makes their occupants vulnerable in property disputes.
Khaya Lam
Khaya Lam is an initiative of the Free Market Foundation, a Johannesburg-based think tank. Translated as “Our Home”, Khaya Lam is a hands-on programme aiming to provide title to the long-term occupants of houses in South Africa’s townships. It uses donor sponsorships to assist municipalities to transfer title to beneficiaries. Its goal is to assist those who have been excluded from property rights to access them.
Africa in Fact sat down with the Khaya Lam team to get a sense of how this works, and what it reveals about the state of urban property rights in the country.
Since being established in 2014, Khaya Lam has facilitated the issuing of 23 000 title deeds, which it estimates were worth some R3.5 billion. Many of the beneficiaries have lived in these houses for decades; the oldest was 102. For Khaya Lam head Terry Markman, the visible sense of elation evident when title deeds are received is the defining feature of the programme: “When you see how happy they are, it’s amazing. And it was so emotional when an elderly lady says, ‘Now I can die and my children will get the property.’”
To make this happen, Khaya Lam needs to form a partnership with a municipality; this is where property is currently registered. This can be difficult, as many are dysfunctional, uninterested or simply suspicious of any outside approach. Should a municipality express interest, the next step is a memorandum of understanding, which sets the parameter of the working relationship. This, too, can take an extensive amount of time. Success might depend on a committed and cooperative official who can shepherd the project even in a very challenged municipality, though this also raises the problem of continuity in the event of his or her departure.
In a sense, that represents the simple part. Khaya Lam’s representatives agreed that there is no such thing as a “simple” transfer. The houses it seeks to transfer are municipal property, to which there is a paper trail showing who the lawful beneficiary is. he original occupants may be deceased, and the property now occupied by a new generation. There may be disputes between potential heirs over ownership. And in numerous instances, the house itself has been informally sold. Each case throws up its own sets of legal and administrative complications. For example, if a property has come to be in the possession of a foreign national, such ownership will not be recognised.
Even more confounding is a legacy of deficient administration. “Before transfer can take place, the parent title deed for the township is required – think of this as a blank title deed covering a large area that was issued when the township was proclaimed. But the parent deed may well be missing, in which case a process to replace it needs to be undertaken.”
It is not uncommon to find that the accepted boundaries of properties (or the structures themselves) do not conform to the formal demarcation; this requires the area to be surveyed again. In some places, traditional authority cuts into a settlement, effectively making titling impossible for some properties.
And then there are the legal intricacies that attend the transfer. The system is essentially designed with transactions in a mature property market in mind, conducted by people who understand it. As eagerly as taking ownership is embraced by people who have been denied it, doing so is to enter an often-unfamiliar system. (Although Markman argues that people who receive their title deeds are aware of their importance.)
This is particularly the case in respect of the passing on of property after the death of the original owner. Prof Montgomery, who studied Khaya Lam as part of her academic work, points to the multiplicity of requirements involved in transferring property, notes: “People don’t always understand the process of legal transfer in the Deeds Registry. It’s expensive and complicated; it seems that some people get this confused with making changes at the municipal office. The question is, how do we make this system accessible to everyone?” Such lacunae, she argues, risk making these gains temporary, and setting the whole process back to its proverbial square one.
Markman responds that generally Khaya Lam focuses on first transfers from the municipality to the beneficiary. It doesn’t get involved with second transfers such as from an estate to the children (Prof Montgomery’s concern in this instance). This is dealt with by conveyancers, although he notes that engaging a conveyancer can be an expense that not everyone can afford. He adds: “Incidentally, I have suggested that the property could be transferred from the municipality to the children if the parents agree.”
Indeed, for all the hard work Khaya Lam has done, there are no illusions among its team about the extent of what remains to be done. “There is no single problem to be addressed.” says Markman. “There is a whole system of issues. Obviously, with more money, we could put more teams into more municipalities. But it’s a huge job; I estimate that there are 0.5 to 1.2 million properties that need to be titled. And then there are informal settlements.”
Informal settlements
Informal settlements present a different order of complexity. They typically exist without even the limited legal recognition – such as being legally proclaimed townships, or surveyed stands – that makes the titling done by Khaya Lam possible.
Yet “informal” is not necessarily equivalent to “slum”. It denotes, rather, a state of existing outside planned communities. Individual structures may be well-constructed and represent considerable brick-by-brick investment – so much so, that GG Alcock estimates the value of the country’s untitled properties at a staggering R3 trillion rand. Burgert Gildenhuys concurs: “People spend huge sums in building in informal areas without proper security. This is seen as a social good, to exist among others in a community.”
For Alcock, a starting point is understanding the social context, which bedevils titling. “Homes are frequently viewed as belonging to a family,” he says, echoing a dynamic identifiable across the continent. “They are owned across generations, so how do you decide who gets the title deed?”
And while he is familiar with the good work done by Khaya Lam, he is sceptical of any capacity to roll it out on a wider scale. “Most homes that are owned outside the formal system will never get a title deed. It’s too complicated,” he argues. Besides, as his work has shown, the informal economy is intrinsic to the livelihoods of millions, irrespective of the dictates of the state. So, when the post-1994 state provided small “RDP” houses, they came with restrictions on extending, renting or selling – none of which prevented precisely those things from happening. The demands of the formal system have limited purchase.
Alcock makes a conceptual distinction between ownership and title: the former a social idea, the latter a legal one. For this reason, he has been involved in the development of a system called E-Deed. This is an attempt to bridge the gap between the exclusion fostered by a lack of formal title and the difficulties of attempting to provide it. E-Deed uses satellite imagery and AI tools to assess the value of properties, based on building materials and the upgrades over time. The idea is that E-Deed would provide banks with a reliable and acceptable measure of value that banks will accept as collateral.
Mapping out and owning the future
An enduring challenge is that the existing variable system of property rights means that some urban inhabitants would be perpetually subject to inferior security. As powerful as a social convention may be, it has its limits as a legal mechanism. Says Prof Montgomery: “My experience is that people understand the legal protections that ownership confers – it’s not just about the social aspect. Legal rights are enforceable if someone comes to take your property. Social conventions are not quite as robust.”
Indeed, sustaining a properly consistent regime of property rights is a precondition for a stable land market, without which cities in South Africa and across the continent have no future. As urban planning consultant Prof Stephen Berrisford succinctly phrases it: “Urban economies that are not built on a stable land market are themselves unstable.”
What is to be done? Clearly, proper, formal title is a worthy goal, one to be pursued – although not one that is immediately attainable. Greater resources and partnerships with bodies like Khaya Lam would help, but they are unlikely to be forthcoming on the scale that would be necessary. And for the informal market, the existing legal prescriptions simply make this a non-starter.
A key element here is to integrate societal mores into property protections. Alcock suggests that the concept of a family home needs to be formally recognised. He also envisages upgrading informal tenure arrangements to something legally binding, but short of formal title, perhaps along the lines of the Mozambican DUAT. The DUAT (Direito de Uso e Aproveitamento da Terra) is a long-term, renewable legal right to use a piece of land. This, he thinks, may be possible for South Africa’s administrative systems to handle. At the very least, this could operate as a waystation towards full formalisation at some indeterminate point in the future.
Along similar lines, Gildenhuys argues for a recognition and conjunction of formal and traditional systems that regulate landholding. Each is a reality, and each is necessary. “This is the challenge: how can we accommodate the different systems into a system? How do we get traditional systems to integrate with the market?” The local governance system in the country currently excludes traditional leadership, although these leaders exercise a sizeable influence on urban centres. Areas under traditional control are often not properly mapped, raising their own set of complications. “Maybe,” he suggests, “a first step would be to bring traditional leaders in?”
Prof Montgomery, meanwhile, argues that possibilities exist within established culture practice to fortify the operation of formal property rights. For example, millions of Africans hold death and funeral policies. Perhaps these could make provision for the transfer of properties, hiring a conveyancer and dealing with the administrative matters associated with the process.
For the moment, though, South Africa and the broader continent face an urbanisation process that is often perhaps better described as an urbanisation crisis. “We recognise urbanisation, but we don’t understand it properly,” observes Gildenhuys. The continent has yet to come up with a proper answer. Failing to do so into the future will condemn millions to chronic insecurity and truncated life chances and prevent its cities from becoming the engines of development that Africa’s future demands.
This is an extended version of an article originally published in the journal Africa in Fact.
[Image: https://www.pexels.com/photo/an-aerial-view-of-a-city-with-tall-buildings-17732553/]
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