COMMUNITY RESOURCE MOBILIZATION FOR INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS REGULARIZATION: IMPACT OF PRIVATE COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP IN TANZANIA EDWARD KINABO, RENNY CHIWA, PAMELA MARO, ALLOYCE NYAISA HUMAN SETTLEMENTS ACTION (HUSEA) - TANZANIA [email protected] [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Paper Prepared for Presentation at the “2019 WORLD BANK CONFERENCE ON LAND AND POVERTY” The World Bank - Washington DC, March 25-29, 2019 Copyright 2019 by Author(s). All rights reserved. Readers may make verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial purposes by any means, provided that this copyright notice appears on all such copies. ABSTRACT The need to mobilize resources from alternative sources beyond government revenues and donor grants is very critical towards achieving not only Tanzania urban development, but also the global goal of ensuring inclusive and sustainable cities and communities by 2030. This Paper offers practical approaches from a Private Community Partnership that strategically addressed resource gap for financing sustainable urban planning, development and management with a special focus on Informal Settlements Regularization. It presents best practices from the Human Settlements Action (HUSEA) – a private Urban Planning firm that mobilized over 1.5 Billion TZS (equivalent to 639, 577.02 USD) from informally developed communities in Dar-Es-Salaam city. The ongoing Partnership has so far put in regularization over 30,404 land parcels that benefit over 148,979 lives in a span of 8 months. It concludes that there is a huge potential of resources at community level that, if well tapped, can finance public developmental projects. KEY WORDS: Community, Informal Settlements, Resource mobilization, Regularization, Urbanization 1. BACKGROUND INFORMATION 1.1 INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT Now than ever before, the future of the developing world is determined by the way countries make priority investments in urban planning, development and management. The question of how to meet the needs of rapid population and urbanization growth calls for strategic innovations and actions from both state and non-state actors. Rural communities of the past decades are transitioning to an urbanizing world. Poverty and development are increasingly becoming issues of urban concern than it used to be back then. Today, approximately 4 billion of the 7.4 billion world’s population lives in urban areas. By the deadline of the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2030, 60% of the world population will reside in cities, proportionally twice that of 1950. As urban population outnumbers rural population, the locus of global poverty is moving into towns and cities, especially into the mushrooming informal settlements and slums. As of now, a quarter of world’s population, approximately 1 billion people, live in slums (World Health Organization & UN Habitat, 2016. As defined by the United Nations (UN), slums are places where people live with any one of “five deprivations”: clean water, improved sanitation, sufficient living area so as not to be over-crowded, durable housing, and secure tenure (Judith, 2016). Poverty rests in these informalities. Attaining an agenda for poverty alleviation by 2030 requires not only a priority focus on urban areas, but also zeroing in addressing informal settlements and slums. An increasing urban poor population needs, among other viable interventions, a rescue of formalization and regularization of informal settlements. Land regularization ensures legal recognition of land acquired irregularly, promote security of land tenure, enhance access to roads, way leaves, social services, community amenities and public utilities, as well as reduce levels of poverty to individual land holders and nation at large. This is also regarded as a tool towards reducing inequalities of land monopoly between those who afford to obtain land through legal channels as opposed to majority of disadvantaged population who are unable to obtain land through legal channels. Failure to register land and codify occupation rights makes the poor stuck in the so-called informal sector from accessing their dead capital. Hernandos de Soto has calculated that the value of dead capital in the developing world far exceeds the amount ever being disbursed through international development assistance. In the Diagnosis Report of the Property and Business Formalization Program in Tanzania, for example, the researchers calculated that the value presented by dead capital in the country totals $29bn, which is more than Tanzania has received in foreign assistance since independence (Sunder Geir, 2006).Among other options in addressing irregularly developed urban centers, regularization of informal settlements matter. 1.2 URBANIZATION TRENDS IN TANZANIA The United Republic of Tanzania (URT) is located in East Africa between longitude 29 and 41 degrees East and latitude 1 and 12 degrees South. The country is made up of the Mainland (formerly known as Tanganyika) and the two islands of Unguja and Pemba jointly known as Zanzibar. The country has a land size 945, 087 square kilometers largest of all other East African countries putting together (Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi). Tanzania has experienced rapid economic growth, with its annual GDP growth averaging around 7% in the last decade. Despite the growth, Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in Africa with approximately 26.8 of the population still living below the basic needs poverty line (The World Bank Group, 2019). In terms of Human Development Index (HDI) which measures– (i) a long and healthy life, (ii) knowledge (by education indicators), and (iii) a decent standard of living (by income per capital), Tanzania falls in the category of countries with low levels of human development, ranked 151 out of 188 countries globally (UNDP, 2017). Like other developing countries, Tanzania is not isolated in the global population and urbanization trends. In the last 35 years, the country population has almost tripled to 50.1 million (2016 estimate). At the last population census in 2012, the country had reached a population of 44.9 million, with 13 million living in urban areas (Tanzania National Bureau of Statistics, 2012). This implies that the size of the total population living in urban areas was low by international standards, with more than 70% of the population based in rural areas. At 2.7 percent per annum, the national average population growth rate is one of the fastest in the world and translates to a net addition of 1.2 million people each year. At the present rate, Tanzania’s population is projected to reach 67 million in 2025 and 89.2 million by 2035 (UNDP, 2017). As for urbanization, Tanzania is rapidly urbanizing mainly due to rural-urban migration. The country urbanization is accelerating at an annual rate of 5.2% (Tanzania Ministry of Finance,2016). This urbanization growth rate is more than twice the world average (at 2.1%) and higher than the average for Africa (3.5%). With this trend, Tanzania had the sixth highest rate of urban population growth globally in 2015. The country urban population is projected to grow at twice the rate of total population growth, meaning that over half of Tanzania’s population will live in urban areas within 25 years. In a bigger picture, while the two-thirds of the world population will live in urban areas by 2050, with nearly 90% of this urban population occurring in Africa and Asia, Tanzania will be the ninth largest contributor to this increase, following giants such as India, China, Indonesia, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Worrall, 2016). Urban settlements in Tanzania comprise 5 cities, 17 municipalities, 4 towns and more than 300 townships (PMORALG, 2015) Dar-es-Salaam still remains the most urbanized city in the country even after being replaced by Dodoma as a capital city recently. The city is growing at 5.6% and is one the fastest growing in Africa. Actually, it is one of ten largest cities on the African continent in terms of population size. The city had 10% of the national population and 30.3% of Tanzania’s urban population. Mjini Magharibi region in Zanzibar has the next highest proportion of its population residing in urban areas, with 45% of the island’s total population. Other highly urbanized regions after Dar es Salaam on the Tanzanian mainland are Mwanza, Arusha, Mbeya, and Pwani, which all have approximately 33% of their populations living in urban areas. Generally, the country rapid urbanization offers a good opportunity to expedite economic growth, poverty reduction and enhance social inclusion, but much is yet to be done on urban planning, development and management. This triggers the proliferation of informalities in cities, among other factors. 2. THE PROBLEM OF INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS IN TANZANIA About 85% of Tanzania’s general land is not legally registered. Majority of urban population lives in informal settlements. In these areas people do not have Certificate of Right of Occupancy (CROs), experience inadequate and uneven distribution of social services and infrastructures and at some point, forced evictions and demolitions by state authorities. It is noted that, since her independence from the British in 1961, only 15% of Tanzania’s general land has been surveyed and the number of titles offered countrywide does not surpass 2 million (Tanzania Ministry of Lands, Budget Speech , 2016). Unplanned development is a big challenge, particularly in Dar es Salaam, where it