Land Readjustment to Support Peri-Urban Settlement Planning in Kigali City — “How Land Readjustment Is Done in Kigali, and Why It Is Done So?”

National Agricultural Export Development Board, Rwanda

Abstract: Spatial plans are prepared to regulate land use changes, utility provision, and the related redistributions of land use and rights in the course of urbanisation. The implementation of settlement plan requires in most cases the use of land readjustment which in turn interferes with land rights in case of land acquisition and reallocation. It is important to understand the processes of land readjustment taking into consideration the local context. Therefore, the main aim of this study was to investigate the process of land readjustment in Kigali city with specific focus on how land readjustment is done in Kigali and why it is done the way it is done. Nunga site in Kigali City was chosen as the study area. During the preparation of its settlement plan, new regular and equal sized parcels were drawn, which left space for utilities, green spaces and recreational places. Landowners were asked by the district to implement the plan themselves in two years which resulted in many people to sell their land. To investigate how land readjustment is done in Kigali and why it was done that way, a mixed method approach was used: qualitative, quantitative and GIS methods. It was found that the private company designed the plan, demarcate the plots and construct roads hoping to get the payment from the development fees paid by the buyers of the land in the site. Land was acquired and redistributed to owners as per the plan; a big number of new residents came to settle in the site while some residents who used to live in the site left. As proposed by the district, land readjustment turned out to be self-financed. The process of land readjustment in Kigali was relatively straight forward, in two years only; the plan was implemented as expected. Different factors are behind this success, among them, the availability of cadastre covering the whole country; the trust that the government has built to its citizens; the enforcement of developmental policies by the government; and the promotion of legacy and sovereignty by the government of Rwanda were the main factors. However, the process of land readjustment in Nunga site differs from standards of land readjustment according to UN-Habitat, mostly on compensation and cost sharing which were missing in Nunga site.