Informality as a strategy to formalize: Finding housing in Bamako, Mali
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3071
Informality can be a gateway to formality. The growing urban population of Bamako believed that peri-urban land not yet deeded offered potential for future ownership. Village chiefs collaborated with them to allocate plots, sometimes mimicking formal procedures, believing it improved prospects for subsequent legalization. The very prospects of future formalization motivated action.
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Dolores Koenig
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Informality as a strategy to formalize: Finding housing in Bamako, Mali
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2017-12-31
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Dolores Koenig
2017/12/31
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3071
63
American University, Washington, DC, United States
2239-625X
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Informality as a strategy to formalize: Finding housing in Bamako, Mali
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                                              2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 63-68




                                                                                     FORUM




Brindisi to the Brindisians, graffiti in Brindisi, Italy. Photo by A. M. Pusceddu.


In/formalization
Edited by
Alan SMART, Josephine SMART, Filippo M. ZERILLI

Contributions of
Stamatis AMARIANAKIS, Lenka BRUNCLÍKOVÁ, Dolores KOENIG, B. Lynne MILGRAM, Sarah
MUIR, Antonio Maria PUSCEDDU, Alan SMART, Mechthild VON VACANO, Filippo M.
ZERILLI & Julie TRAPPE.




This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © DOLORES KOENIG
Informality as a strategy to formalize: Finding housing in Bamako, Mali
2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 63-68.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3071
IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                          63




Informality as a strategy to formalize
Finding housing in Bamako, Mali

Dolores KOENIG
American University, Washington, DC




ABSTRACT: Informality can be a gateway to formality. The growing urban population of Ba-
mako believed that peri-urban land not yet deeded offered potential for future ownership.
Village chiefs collaborated with them to allocate plots, sometimes mimicking formal proce-
dures, believing it improved prospects for subsequent legalization. The very prospects of fu-
ture formalization motivated action.




   The concept of informality includes various strategies for different pur-
poses. Sometimes, informality is used to escape regulation indefinitely or is
avoided because the costs of formalization are too high or the benefits too
small. This occurred in Latin America and even in Bamako’s center-city infor-
mal neighborhoods. At other times, informality may be a gateway to formal-
ity. Informal means may be used to access goods or resources when formal
access is not possible but is foreseeable. The goal however is eventual for-
malization. This was the case in peri-urban Bamako. Land here was not yet
formally plotted or deeded, but the growing urban population saw places
they could build their homes. They envisioned a future in which the land
would be formally demarcated and they could get legal titles.

Formality and informality in African cities
   Many have perceived developing country cities, especially informal areas
inside and on the periphery, as spaces of disorder, chaos, ungovernability,
and poverty (reviewed in Demissie 2007; Smart 2006: 33). Others have
pointed out that informal areas are not necessarily either chaotic or poor. For
example, Kihato (2007: 116) argued that informal areas represent alternative
regimes to govern and regulate activities, and Ndi (2007: 22) suggested that


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64                                         ALAN SMART, JOSEPHINE SMART, FILIPPO M. ZERILLI (EDS)


they generate a new kind of urbanism, which may include alternative moder-
nities. Whether informal urban neighborhoods are considered problem or
potential, informal and formal are presented as fundamentally separate from
one another. The goal of many planners is to transform the seemingly unreg-
ulated informal into the formal, governed by state regulation and subject to
state scrutiny (Roy 2005: 148; Mica 2016: 141).
   Roy and others have questioned whether there is a radical difference be-
tween formal and informal. Hodder (2016: 117-9) suggested that the di-
chotomy between informality and formality is ultimately imaginary, because
the processes and rules of formality are shaped and sustained by informal so-
cial relations. Roy (2005: 148) proposed that informality be viewed as a mode
of urbanization, since substantial numbers, sometimes a majority, of resi-
dents of developing country cities live in informal areas. Mica (2016) pro-
posed that formalities and informalities often incorporate the rules of both,
thus are often hybrids. Trans-formality is a type of informality that occurs
when the move toward formality comes from the bottom-up; those involved
may adopt rational-legal approaches (Mica 2016: 148). Although the transi-
tion from informality to formality is by no means universal, the example I
discuss here, urbanization on Bamako’s periphery, is aptly understood as a
kind of trans-formality, where the goal of residents is eventual formalization.
   In Bamako’s housing context, informality is indeed a lack: of government
planned roads and lot allocation, of title deeds, of integration into utility-
sponsored water and electricity systems. Its informality reflects a structural
understanding of formality as involving state regulation (Mica 2016). In large
part the informality is due to the inability of the municipal and national gov-
ernments to cope with high growth and provide formal institutions in new
neighborhoods (Vaa 2007). The data here come from short-term fieldwork in
2009 and long-term knowledge of the Bamako real estate market.

Bamako and its periphery
   Bamako, Mali’s capital city, has grown substantially over the years, from
about 130,000 in the 1960s to 1.9 million in 2010 and estimated at almost 3
million in 2015 (UN Habitat 2014: 270). As the city has grown, so too have its
residential areas. The formal city within the boundaries of the District of Ba-
mako is no longer sufficient to hold its population; urbanized areas include
neighboring, technically rural, communes on the periphery. The District of
Bamako itself contains a patchwork of formally parcelled lots with title deeds
and what locals call «spontaneous neighborhoods», whose populations have


2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 63-68
IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                    65


grown substantially since independence in 1960. In the District, both formal
deeded and informal spontaneous neighborhoods are densely settled; afford-
able housing is difficult to find. Thus many residents have moved outside the
formal District boundaries. As close-in areas become relatively built up, peo-
ple move even farther out into the periphery. There, they find areas managed
under customary tenure.

Customary tenure as the basis of informality on Bamako’s periphery
   Before urbanization, Bamako’s urban periphery was primarily used as agri-
cultural land. Although individuals cultivated their own fields, often in the
family for generations, these were not individually owned. Rather, customary
tenure was conceptualized as village ownership. The village itself had rights
over an area of land, which it considers its land. The village chief, usually a
senior male of the most senior lineage of the village, was the incarnation of
the rights of this collectivity. Traditionally, village chiefs did not act unilater-
ally but with the consultation of elders of other senior lineages. Among the
rights held by the chief was the right to allocate land to newcomers.
   People throughout West Africa, especially in semi-arid zones like Mali,
have used mobility as a strategy to maintain livelihoods for generations.
Crises, such as war or drought, often pushed them to move, but so too did the
search for greater opportunities elsewhere. Village chiefs would allocate set-
tlement rights to newcomers who might invigorate a village economy or pro-
vide better defense in times of war. Thus, villagers generally distinguish an
autochtonous population, descendants of the original settlers, from a
«stranger» population, newcomers or those descended from them. I have no
information on the distribution of population between autochtones and
strangers on Bamako’s periphery, but it is likely that the city’s opportunities
have attracted a significant number of strangers. Although strangers may of-
ten be economically indistinguishable from autochtones, they have inferior
political rights.
   When new residents come to Bamako’s periphery, their goal is to find a
building lot on which they can then construct their own housing. They
search out those who control access to land, usually the village chiefs. This
system is informal in the sense that it is not a part of the formal legal system.
There are no standard building lots, title deeds, or defined roads. Nor do
these areas have access to the range of public services, such as water, sewage,
and electricity, expected in urban communities. Schools and health clinics
exist, but are geared to small rural communities.


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66                                         ALAN SMART, JOSEPHINE SMART, FILIPPO M. ZERILLI (EDS)


   The central government has introduced some changes into the system. In
the 1990s, Mali decentralized its government by dividing up the country into
communes composed of multiple villages, with local control by elected com-
mune governments. This change was recognized in Mali’s revised 2000 land
code, slightly modified in 2002. This law recognizes the commune’s rights to
any undeeded (i.e., non-matriculated) land within its borders. The law also
recognizes customary land rights; communes can only gain control over the
non-matriculated land held by rural villages with their agreement and the
payment of compensation. The process of urbanization invokes the potential
role of the commune government to matriculate land by apportioning it into
building lots and offering residents title deeds. To do so, however, it must
first matriculate the land after gaining the consent of those with customary
tenure.

Getting land on the periphery
   Many villages’ chiefs have realized that urban growth means that their vil-
lages have little future as agricultural areas. In the past, strangers received
use rights for a symbolic payment of ten kola nuts, but new residents want a
permanent transfer of ownership, where they can build residences. There is
no traditional model for the transfer of land from annual cropping to perma-
nent habitation. Thus, many chiefs, sometimes but not always in conjunction
with elders, have decided that the best option is short-term benefit. They
have begun to negotiate prices with those who would like to settle and build.
Some interviewees noted that prices had increased dramatically, sometimes
10-fold, from the 1980s through 2009. These sales have no formal legal sta-
tus, since village is not and cannot be matriculated; they are informal agree-
ments between customary owners and users.
   Even though the land sale is informal at purchase, the hope of newcomers
is for future formalization. Once a village has informally ceded a significant
percentage of its land to individuals, the commune government may decide
to negotiate a final cession of land from the village to the commune. Then,
the commune can carry out a formal matriculation and parcellization and
sell the lots (now carrying the potential for title) to actual or potential resi-
dents. Residents also envisage that formal parcellization will bring roads,
water, and better services. Thus, informality here can best be conceptualized
not as an alternative to formal urbanization, but as a step on the path to for-
malization. This suggests trans-formality, the bottom-up effort to move to
formality (Mica 2016).


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IN/FORMALIZATION                                                                  67


   During 2009 fieldwork, people did not point to villages in which this trans-
formation had taken place. Instead it was an imaginary that motivated peo-
ple’s actions. When people settled, surveyors, who reflect formal organiza-
tion, were often called upon to mark out plots; sometimes a village under-
took its own parcellization. Villages might also issue a paper marking the
transfer of the lot. People could pay the commune government to stamp this
paper, even though it was not a legal document. This adoption of formal
technologies of ownership suggests the adoption of rational-legal ap-
proaches (Mica 2016).
   Residents establish their ownership by building on their new lots. Resi-
dents hoped that when formal parcellization occurred, they would have the
right to purchase the lots on which they lived. On the other hand, if their
house was in the right of way of a new road or water system, they hoped to
gain the right to buy a replacement lot in the formalized area. Thus, they saw
the existing process as an investment in future stability. They recognized
that they might have to pay three times for their lot: first, to procure land
from the village; second, to get a temporary title when the commune carried
out formal parcellization; and third, to get a title deed, when all conditions,
such as construction of a permanent house according to building standards,
were fulfilled.

Conclusions
   The informal process of urbanizing Bamako’s periphery is thus a bottom-
up effort toward a more formal organization. Driven by urbanites who con-
sider that the periphery offers them a chance for stable and affordable home
ownership, it depends on the cooperation of village chiefs and commune
governments who want the economic benefits that formalization, through
sales and eventual titling, can bring.
   There are losers as well. The main losers are existing villagers, who are
forced to move even further out if they want to continue to farm. Intervie-
wees claimed that farmers saw their land sold out from under them by chiefs
and other village elders. Others said that the chiefs, who should act as repre-
sentatives of villages, used the proceeds from sales to benefit themselves and
their supporters rather than the village as a whole. Another loser is the zone
of Bamako itself, where urban sprawl has led to increasing congestion and
pollution.




                                      2017 ⎸ANUAC. VOL. 6, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2017: 63-68
68                                         ALAN SMART, JOSEPHINE SMART, FILIPPO M. ZERILLI (EDS)




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