Land rights, bases of informal settlements and bogus contract documents as a means of urban fringe legal land transactions in Ethiopia

Abstract

Rapid urbanization, particularly the horizontal expansions of towns that are land intensive creates pressures on the demand for urban land, which cannot responded through formal land access. Hence, the informal way of accessing land covers the loophole of the shortage of formal access to land but challenging to the vigorous development and growth of cities. Due to different reasons, individuals bought land informally in the urban fringe areas and take along bogus11Bogus contract documents for this study refer to a fake document made by the seller and the buyer to legalize their transaction. Although row land cannot be sold and mortgaged legally, sale and mortgage of land were done practically with other fake contract documents. contract documents as evidence of legal possession to the municipality. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to examine those bogus contract documents used as evidence of legal possession, the formalization process, and the reasons to prefer the informal root of land acquisition. To do so, simple random sampling technique to a questionnaire survey, interviews with key informants and, focus group discussions were used. The result of the study revealed that different bogus contract documents such as donation though fake document as family member, bogus credit contract, building a house without clear objection through purchase, assignment and Corruption were used for the formalization of the informal holdings. Beyond that, the formalization process, and the reasons to prefer the informal root of land acquisition were identified in the study area.