1.
Mapping tenure security across urban slums and informal
settlements in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Elizabeth Dessie
PhD student
Unit for Human Geography
Department of Economy and Society
University of Gothenburg
elizabeth.dessie@gu.se

2.
1. Why Addis Ababa?F
Urban profile:
- Ethiopian capital - population of cca. 4 million (World Bank 2014).
- poor housing and neighbourhood conditions across urban centres nationally (GFDDR 2015).
- proportion of urban population living in slums as high as 80 percent (2005 MDG Assessment, Un Habitat 2009).
Causes?
Absence of colonial urban planning structures = lack of foundations for the formalisation of private property right to land
- Emperor Haile Selassie’s rule (1930-1974): customary land tenure systems
- The Derg regime (1974-1991): “land to the tiller”
- EPRDF rule (1991- to date): continued Derg-imposed state control of land
Legal ambiguity = fuelling ‘informal cities’
- “The right to ownership of rural and urban land, as well as of all natural resources, is exclusively vested in the State and the
peoples of Ethiopia ((Article 40, 1. Federal Constitution. 1992).
-“Every Ethiopian shall have the full right to the immovable property he builds (…) This right shall include the right to alienate (…)
transfer his title, or claim compensation for it.” (Article 40, 7. Federal Constitution. 1992).

3.
Policy responses to urban poverty:
- Creation of National Urban Development Policy (2005)
- Plan for Accelerated and Sustained Development to End Poverty (PASDEP) (2006-2010)
- Addis Ababa Integrated Regional Development Plan (MasterPlan, 2014- Jan 2016)
- How accessible is urban land today?
◦ a process of land titling is under way across selected parts of the city and includes certain ‘old’ slums
◦ city authorities continue to be the sole suppliers of land / deliver use rights based on lease
agreements
◦ prevalence of diverse tenure types and regimes + coexistence of formal and informal tenure settings
Relevance?
“Ethiopian cities differ from other African cities in that they do not have clearly defined slum areas.”
(UN Habitat 2008, p.18).
Unique case of a city where formal housing envelopes slums and informal settlements

4.
Photo: GFDDR(2015).

5.
2. Conceptual overview
A slum is a settlement where inhabitants are characterized as having (i) insecure residential status; ii) inadequate
access to safe water; (iii) inadequate access to sanitation and other basic infrastructure and services; (iv) poor
structural quality of housing; (v) overcrowding (Un Habitat 2008).
An informal settlement is an area where groups of housing units have been constructed on land that the
occupants have no legal claim to, or occupy illegally (OECD 2001)
Land tenure can be defined as the relationship, whether legally or customarily defined, among people, as
individuals or groups, with respect to land and as the rules invented by societies to regulate this relationship (FAO
2002).
Tenure has been identified as one of two indicators for measuring progress in the implementation of the urban
target included within the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (Payne 2001) and as the core issue of
impact on the lives of slum dwellers (Durrand-lasserve 2006).
Generally accepted answer to tenure insecurity in an informal urban context? Formalisation
Hernando de Soto: The Mystery of Capital (2001) - theory on ‘dead’ capital / ‘injecting life’ into the
assets of the poor through the delivery of registered land rights – enabling ‘the poor’ to use land as collateral
for a loan and increase the value of their assets within the market economy
Q. 1. How accurate is the conviction of urban land tenure informality as a drawback in this process of poverty
alleviation?
Q.2. What is the link between property rights formalisation and tenure security?

6.
3. Aims and objectives
1. To CAPTURE, MEASURE and QUANTITY tenure security within the context of urban informality
a. map current types of irregular settlements and settlers
b. analyse and compare how irregular inhabitants express and experience tenure security
c. identify how resettled slum dwellers (formalised) are experiencing and expressing their tenure
security following formalisation
2. Create a framework to measure tenure security through through spacial and social tools
3. Challenge the ‘formalisation box’ by revisiting the ‘rules’ :
◦ Formalised property rights = secure tenure
◦ Tenure security = measured by tenure type

7.
Comparison and analysis
Analyse and compare 3 different resident
situations and different stages – 1 irregular /
2 formalised:
Squatter / Informal settler / slum dweller:
how does he/she experience and express
their tenure security? Do they invest into
their property or is it viewed as temporary?
What are their concerns: only, rent increase,
owner/administrative eviction, a fine?
Formalised slum dweller: how do they
experience and express their tenure security
since formalisation? What were the
conditions and how has life changed since?
Formalised and resettled slum dweller:
how has tenure security increased since
resettlement and formalisation? How can it
be compared to the previous ‘informal’ way
of experiencing tenure security?
Squatter
(illegal
settler) /
slum dweller
Formalised
slum dweller
Formalised
and
resettled
slum dweller
Guiding question:
how is tenure security expressed and experienced
by urban residents in different phases of the
informal to formal process of registration?

8.
Questions and expected outcomes
Questions
- Do private property rights in land translate to an increase in tenure security?
- Is tenure security experienced and expressed in the same way?
- how does tenure status reflect on livelihood security?
- who are the ‘urban poor’?
- what degree of tenure security increases residential investment into their property?
Potential outcomes
- solutions to accessing land : coops / unions
- case-specific means of securing tenure
- alternatives to formality

9.
Approach
THEORY:
- create a theoretical framework outside the ‘formalisation box’
(not a critique of the ‘dead capital’ standpoint – not a defense either)
METHODOLOGY:
- qualitative data collection (focus groups / interviews) + quantitative tools
- linked to means of measuring tenure security
- spacial dimension to explore…

10.
Bibliography
Arimah, B. C. (2010). The face of urban poverty: Explaining the prevalence of slums in developing countries (No.
2010, 30). Working paper//World Institute for Development Economics Research.
Davis, M. (2003). Planet of Slums. New Left Review.
De Soto, H. (2000) The mystery of capital: why capitalism triumphs in the West and fails everywhere else. Basic
Books: New York.
Durand-Lasserve, A. (2006). Informal settlements and the Millennium Development Goals: global policy debates
on property ownership and security of tenure. Global Urban Development, 2(1), 1-15.
FAO (2002) Land tenure and rural development. FAO: Rome.
GFDDR (2015). Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – Enhancing Urban Resilience. City Strength Resilient Cities Programme. The
World Bank Group: Washington.
OECD (2001) Glossary of Statistical terms: Informal settlements. United Nations: New York.
Payne, G. (2001). Urban land tenure policy options: Titles or rights?. Habitat International, 25(3), 415-429.
UN-HABITAT (2008). Ethiopia Urban Profile. UN-HABITAT: Nairobi.
World Bank (2014) Ethiopia Poverty Assessment. World Bank Group: Washington.