Land Information System: a Tool for Land Governance? Insights from the Urban Land Registry in Benin
Simonneau, Claire
Land Information Systems (LIS) are conventionally presented as relevant tools to improve land governance in Subsaharan Africa. LIS can be defined as a parcel-‐based database combined with software and procedures designed to collect, update, and process data (Dale et McLaughlin, 1989), and can be associated with geospatial technologies. The issue of LIS implementation is mainly tackled by Computer Science specialists. Indeed, since the 1980s, technologies have allowed quicker and cheaper collection and sharing of data, and innovations continue to offer promising perspectives. However, one can observe several "good" projects that fail in the implementation phase, despite the use of innovative and adapted technologies. Therefore, how can this phenomena be explained? Actually, little is known about the local and practical conditions in which these tools are implemented. The abundant technical literature on innovations in the fields of computer science, geospatial technologies or database management applied to LIS hides fundamental sociological questions: who implements the LIS? And who benefits from it? This paper offers a different perspective on LIS and their link to improved urban and periurban land governance. Through a multiple case study in Benin, this paper presents an analysis of the daily implementation of a LIS on the ground and from an anthropological perspective.
Event: Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty 2015
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