The practical norms of land governance in Senegalese communes. Institutional incompleteness, politicisation, semi-formality and bricolage

The decentralisation of land administration is often presented as a condition for 'good land governance'. In Senegal, the 1964 law on the national domain places rural land within the national domain, under the responsibility of the communes. They can allocate use rights to residents, provided that they personally cultivate the plot. All land transactions are prohibited. These principles, which stem from the 'African socialism' of independence, are in conflict with the political stakes of land tenure, the development of commercial transactions and agribusiness, and intense land speculation, particularly on the fringes of the Dakar metropolis. Based on in-depth surveys conducted in six communes on the outskirts of Dakar (the capital) and Saint-Louis, this article reveals the administrative practices and routines, often far removed from the rule, that constitute communal land governance in action. Favoured by lasting legal loopholes, a set of semi-legal or even illegal practices have become widespread, through successive bricolage, on the part of elected officials and communal administrations as well as by the land administration. To varying degrees depending on the socio-economic and political contexts of the communes, they allow access to land for actors from outside the commune, and the legalisation of illegal sales, while at the same time favouring the clientelist consolidation of the power of elected officials and their enrichment. This politicised governance of land is tolerated by the central government, which also uses the law to serve its political allies and promote its own projects. •Senegal decentralised land management 30 years before the 1990 wave of decentralisation.•Bricolage within an incomplete institutional framework led to a highly politicised communal land governance.•Land allocation and housing subdivisions relay on stabilised practices that may be semi-legal or even illegal.•Communal actors, state administration, customary authorities and entrepreneurs both ally and compete for allocating land.•The state does not address the legal gaps; it is himself a party to the manipulation of the law.