Abstract
A Fit-for-Purpose (FFP) land administration system strives for a more flexible, inclusive, participatory, affordable, reliable, realistic, and scalable approach to land administration and management in developing countries. The FFP finds itself thus at the interface with the coordination and governance challenges of the mainstream promotion of democratic decentralization of the past decades in general, and collaborative systems for decentralized and participatory land governance in Africa, in particular. One recent example of such collaborative systems for decentralized land governance is the introduction in South Africa between 2015 and 2019 of District Land Reform Committees (DLRCs). We analyze this official experiment in collaborative land governance from a ‘system of innovation’ (SI) perspective. An adapted SI framework is developed and applied in three DLRCs. This study points out that for the innovation of collaboration to be effective, DLRCs require a firm operational and institutional backup. This is an important lead for the general discussion on inclusion, participation, and collaboration in FFP. We not only need these innovations to be well-supported and -resourced; they also require the explicit adoption of a systemic perspective in which various technical and social dimensions are interlinked.
Highlights
The past decade has seen the promotion of the concept of Fit-for-Purpose (FFP) land administration in response to challenges to security of access to land globally, especially in developing countries
One recent example of such collaborative systems for decentralized land governance is the introduction in South Africa of District Land Reform Committees (DLRCs) between 2015 and 2019
The reviewers found that better information on local land needs and uses need to be gathered and disseminated, DRDLR should assume its coordinating role more prominently, attention should be paid to remuneration and members’ skills, and the DLRCs must become more visible, accountable, and inclusive [7]
Summary
The past decade has seen the promotion of the concept of Fit-for-Purpose (FFP) land administration in response to challenges to security of access to land globally, especially in developing countries. Choudhury, Haran and Leshinsky [3] situate FFP, at the interface with the mainstream promotion of democratic decentralization of the past decades, and its challenges in India in terms of coordination and governance between the multiple levels and actors These result especially in contested political authority, low local capacity, limited democratic dividends, and a lack of integration between new and existing land administration systems. Using a fairly simplistic logic to describe complex (sub)system relations, information can be collected from within, analyzed and understood by both internal and external actors in terms of prevailing and aspired collaboration as well as priority support areas These assessments of present collaboration opportunities and failures from a SI perspective in DLRCs do, in conclusion, lead to relevant pointers for the discussion of the systemic promotion of participation and collaborative governance in FFP in general
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