Resolving land disputes one of our major successes - Tanzanian govt

The fifth phase government of Tanzania has recorded tremendous achievements in the land sector, among which is the record success in resolving land conflicts, which is one of the chronic problems within various communities.

In his speech to dissolve Parliament on Tuesday in Dodoma, President John Magufuli noted that some of the steps taken to address land disputes in the country include establishing ward tribunals and land offices in all regions which are responsible for planning, surveying, valuation and issuance of title deeds.

"This has accelerated the land formalisation and issuances of title deeds in which a total of 764,158 plots have been formalised and 515,474 customary title deeds were issued in the five years. Most notably, it is the government decision to allocate 920 of the 975 villages for habitation that was in the reserve areas," he said.

The Head of State said the government had established a total of 97 ward tribunals in various parts of the country to help address land disputes at the grassroots level, whereby over the last five years, the tribunals resolves at least 131,603 of them.

Dr Magufuli further said the government successfully addressed several land conflicts as well as other concerns of people, especially farmers, fishermen, herders, traders, workers and entrepreneurs.

The fifth-phase government voted into power in 2015 has increased pastoral areas from 1.4 million hectares in 2015 to 5 million hectares in 2020 thus helping to reduce conflicts between farmers and pastoralists.

Over farmers-pastoralists conflicts in different parts of the country is a rampant trend, whereby some people monopolized pieces of land without necessarily developing them.

On different occasions, President Magufuli annulled ownership of undeveloped lands and handed them over to villagers for farming activities.

Moving his budget on May 2020, Lands Minister William Lukuvi announced that the ministry was seeking to end land disputes.

He explained that among the many plans of the government was freezing district land and housing tribunals and transferring their duties to courts.

As of April 30, the ministry administered about 5,892 disputes and is planning to handle 1,000 disputes during the 2020/21 financial year.

From the next fiscal year, the Judiciary will start hearing land dispute cases.