Private and communal property ownership regimes in Tanzania

Tanzania’s well-known village establishment programme, which is called Ujamaa , allowed for the sedentarization of almost all rural residents in some 8 000 villages in the 1970s. The effective impact of villagization on land distribution may vary, but a general preference for individual assignments of rights has been observed in nearly all cases under study, which is at least partially due to the track record of communal production in the framework of Ujamaa . Only 6 percent of the country’s total surface is under cultivation. Therefore, common property management and open access to resources are an important part of all land tenure policy. Neither the privatization of rights nor the continuation of previous forms of common property permit forest and pastoral resources to be maintained under all circumstances, and are thus both inadequate. User groups must be identified and be assigned ownership of user rights, including the right and means to keep out trespassers. [author]