The present paper entitled “Land Market in Maputo and Matola Cities” comes out in the compass of studies on land market in rural and urban areas promoted by Land and Development Studies Unity (NET) of Eduardo Mondlane University, with support of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), based in Pretoria.
After independence, in 1975, the land was nationalised and has become to the state ownership since 1979. According to the land law and national constitution, “land can not be sold, rent, hired, mortgaged, or any other type of transaction” (Republic of Mozambique, 1979a e 1979b).
However, since the decade of 1980, the demand for land in urban areas increased, specially in the established green zones, peri-urban areas reserved for farming (Roth, Boucher and Francisco, 1995), and in the rural areas, where land was suitable for agriculture or where there are some infrastructure like irrigation systems, water streams, roads and railways (Waterhouse and Vijfthuizen, 2001) the demand for land also increased.
Theories of classical economics postulate that when the demand for land is high, it gains value in economic, social and ecological terms and then creates condition for the establishment of commercial trade transition processes of pieces of land or plots (Bromley and Cernea, 1989; Barrows and Roth, 1990; Platteau, 1996; and Sajaastad and Bromley, 1997).
In Mozambique, the land market is happening and are tends to increase, even though officially land ownership or property still belongs to the state, according to the current land law (Republic of Mozambique, 1997). And while the consequences of this situation are the different ways in which many people try to obtain rights of land occupation and use, whereby they resort to both formal and informal processes, some questions can be raised, such as:
- The origin of the land market process in Mozambican cities;
- The linkage between land market and urban planning processes; and
- The implication of land market on urban planning process.
The problems that emerged are enormous and this paper will try to analyse these problems, especially those related to urban planning process. The proposal advanced in the second part of this paper it is not intended to constitute an alternative way but simples to vicky off the debate around this issue.
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