Land Tenure and “Right to the City” in Bouaké, Côte d’Ivoire: What do “Forum Shopping” and “Intersectionality” Got to Do with It?
Land tenure in West Africa has increasingly been shaped over the decades by various conflicts rooted in persistent social inequalities and legal pluralism (Firmin-Sellers 2000, Berry 2009). Much of the urban growth is taking place in secondary cities such as Kumasi, Bouaké, Kaduna and Thiès. These cities connect rural areas to national and international markets, facilitating the movement of goods, services, and people. Access to land, its security, and its use largely determine who has the right to live, move about, and participate in urban life. The “right to the city,” a concept popularised by Lefebvre (1967), refers to the possibility for city dwellers to benefit equitably from urban resources and to participate in their production. In the West African context, this right is often hindered by complex and unequal land tenure systems. Indeed, access to land represents a central issue involving power, wealth, and social recognition.
In the quest of understanding and unravelling the intricacies inherent to dwellers’ discourses and practices related to land tenure in the city, I turn to two concepts to shed light on this complexity: “forum shopping” and “intersectionality”. Forum shopping is understood as the ability of social actors to navigate between multiple legal or institutional systems to defend their interests at stake (von Benda-Beckmann, 1981). Intersectionality highlights the overlapping of power relations through the lenses of gender, class, age, immigration status, etc. (Crenshaw, 1991).
The data presented here are drawn from semi-structured interviews and observation sessions conducted on and off in the city of Bouaké (Côte d’Ivoire) from 2014 onward. This is part of a research project titled “Land tenure in West African secondary cities”, conducted during an individual MIASA fellowship in 2021. The research project looks into the intertwined links between urban dwellers’ discourses and practices related to land tenure in Bobo Dioulasso, Burkina Faso; Bouaké, Côte d’Ivoire and Kumasi, Ghana. Using a diversity of land conflicts as an entry point, I analyse how heterogeneous groups of social actors involved in handling urban land tenure systems interact with each other to stake their claims.
Multiplicity of Landholding Systems: A Revealer of Privilege and Invisible Shackles
Land tenure in West Africa is based on a coexistence of context-based norms and practices used by various social actors. Forum shopping in this context occurs when stakeholders (lambda dwellers, custodians of family land that is ruled by “customary”1 land tenure, developers, migrants, local elites) strategically choose between various identities and, or, dispute resolution options, when faced with land conflicts. In the following lines, I look into the way the term propriétaire terrien is used to refer to different meanings with various implications: land custodian, alienation right owner, intermediary. Literally translated, propriétaire terrien means “land owner”. I observed that some neighbourhoods in Bouaké designated the neighbourhoods’ first settlers’ families as propriétaires terriens. This mostly holds true for former villages or hamlets like Fètèkro Extension, that progressivley turned into urban neighbourhoods with the city’s expansion. The propriétaires terriens represent the “guarantors of traditions”2 and play the role of an ambivalent earth priest in most neighbourhoods.
The mediation role between human beings and ancestors played by the earth priests in several rural areas in West Africa (Zongo 2009) is used both as a referent and an antonym in Bouaké, when addressing the definition of the type of social actors referred to as propriétaires terriens. Even though the first settlers’ families in Bouaké neighbourhoods are perceived by several Bouaké dwellers as decisive actors in the existing land tenure regulations, they are not referred to as earth priests (chefs de terre) but rather as propriétaires terriens. The term propriétaires terriens, used both by the state administration officers and lambda Bouaké dwellers, relates to any individual or family member of the neighbourhood’s first settlers, whose claim over a plot of land is legitimised by their ʽfirst settlersʼ status. The conversations and interviews I conducted in Bouaké with the state administration officers and other Bouaké dwellers (both ʽordinaryʼ dwellers and members from the propriétaires terriens family) revealed that there is no distinct common understanding of the roles and functions of a propriétaire terrien.
Firstly, propriétaire terrien understood as ʽland ownerʼ or ʽsoil ownerʼ, evokes the possessiveness of a group of individuals over a specifically delimited area. While most state administration’s officers would refer to the decree N° 2013-4823 and declare that “land belongs to the state”, propriétaires terriens stated that land belongs first and foremost to the family. Secondly, it refers to the settlement order within a specific former village or former hamlet in Bouaké. This first settler characteristic associated with propriétaires terriens refers to land tenure in rural areas, with an earth priest and a village chief. However, only one Bouaké dweller referred to the religious ceremonies organised by some propriétaires terriens in Bouaké, as it would be executed in a rural area.
The conversations I had with propriétaires terriens from two neighbourhoods (Konankankro and Fètèkro Extension) revealed that the religious traditional ceremonies related to land tenure were not a compulsory act to be executed in their understanding of their function. They asserted that their role was different from the one that could be expected from an earth priest. To them, the ʽguarantors of the landʼ attributes conferred to the propriétaire terrien was synonymous to the right to grant or deny access and usage to an inheritance contracted due to their respective families’ first settler status in the area. Furthermore, a member of the Konankankro propriétaires terriens family referred to his Evangelic pastor profession to explain why the propriétaire terrien was to be dissociated from an earth priest. He assured me that a propriétaire terrien could be perceived as an earth priest and behave like one, but this according to him was not a sine qua non condition to be recognised as a propriétaire terrien.
According to my interlocutors, propriétaires terriens designates an individual or a group of individuals who play the role of the “real care takers of the land”4 without necessarily being an earth priest. However, being the land’s “real care takers” does not prevent propriétaires terriens from going through the property process set by the Construction Ministry, to be a ʽlegal ownerʼ as well. Drawing on this ambiguity embedded in the denomination propriétaires terriens, I argue that the urban or the rural character of land tenure is continuously socially constructed and shaped by all the social actors directly and indirectly involved in handling land tenure systems in Bouaké. However, this does not equate into propriétaires terriens being an empty signifier but rather a polysemic term used as a tool by a variety of social actors with convergent or diverging interests. In a context where 60 to 80 percent of Bouaké dwellers acquire and secure land through what the Ivorian state refers to as informal channels, individuals develop hybrid strategies to secure their rights (Djah 2021). Forum shopping thus becomes a tool for securing rights, a mechanism for accumulation, but also a source of conflict. While forum shopping may seem accessible to everyone, in reality, its effectiveness depends heavily on the social status of the parties involved.

Fetekro Extension neighbourhood, renamed by its dwellers after an affluent neighbourhood in Abidjan. Aïdas Sanogo (CC-BY-SA), Bouaké, 2017.
The intersectional approach shows that access to land is shaped by gender, age, social class and migration status. For instance, observation sessions conducted in Bouaké show that in most neighbourhoods located at the outskirts of the city, recent migrants, female heads of household, and young people without capital are the most vulnerable to land insecurity, evictions and speculation. In a land conflict in Fetekro Extension neighbourhood, opposing a new migrant to a propriétaire terrien, I have noticed how the propriétaire terrien made use of the leverage he had as a civil servant, member of a propriétaires terriens family. I came across the conflict in 2016 and have since then followed it closely over the course of years, to understand how dwellers discourses and practices shifted depending on their interests. Mr Konaté had been in Bouaké for less than a year when we first met in 2016. He had accessed a plot of land through Mr Konan, a member of a propriétaires terriens family in Fetekro Extension. Unknown to Mr Traoré, the said plot of land was already part of a bigger lot disputed within Mr Konan’s family. Indeed, Mr Konan’s cousin, Mr Kouakou, a civil servant working at the Construction Ministry, claimed that the plot of land attributed to Mr Konaté by his cousin, was part of a bigger lot that belonged to his late father. He contested the Baoulé matrilineal inheritance logic followed by his cousin, stating that it was no longer possible in the 21st century, for nephews to inherit from their maternal oncle. Despite the fact that Mr Kouakou was five years younger than his cousin Mr Konan, his affluent position turned him into the social elder within his extended family. Furthermore, his affiliation with the Construction Ministry equipped him not only with a relevant network within the state institution, but also with the right set of tools in terms of claims articulation using the required vocabulary inherited from the colonial period. On the other hand, both Mr Konaté and Mr Konan lacked the social status and network advantages that would have helped them get some leverage in the arm wrestling opposing them to Mr Kouakou. Intersectionality thus reveals that land tenure is not merely a legal issue, but also a matter of social and spatial justice.

Urban expansion in Fetekro Extension. Aïdas Sanogo (CC-BY-SA), Bouaké 2019.
Concluding remarks
Empirical data collected in Bouaké reveal the existence of unequal forum shopping. Indeed, not all actors have the same ability to navigate between forums. Urban elites can simultaneously draw on multiple systems (customary, administrative, and judicial), secure their transactions, and speculate on peri-urban land. Conversely, marginalised groups are subject to these decisions, have limited access to remedies, and are often excluded from the formalisation process. In addition, there is a pattern of recurring conflicts and shifting power dynamics. For instance, the proliferation of decision-making bodies has led to land conflicts at multiple levels (individual, community, and state) and competition among authorities (traditional chiefdoms, municipalities, and the state). These conflicts are exacerbated by rapid urbanisation, land scarcity, and the commodification of land that started in most West African countries during the colonial period (Berry 2009). Suburban areas thus become strategic spaces where speculative dynamics, forward-looking strategies, and complex negotiations among stakeholders play out. Throughout the 2010s and 2020s, several trends are reinforcing these dynamics, including increased pressure on land resulting from unemployment, underemployment, population growth, rural exodus and insufficient infrastructure investments and income opportunities within rural areas.
Forum shopping and intersectionality provide a crucial framework for understanding land tenure in urban West Africa. The former highlights the strategic flexibility of actors within a pluralistic system, while the latter reveals the structural inequalities that shape this capacity for action. Land tenure in West African urban areas, more particularly in secondary cities, thus continues to be a deeply political arena, where economic imperatives, power dynamics, and social demands intersect. Unlike large cities, which are often dominated by multinational corporations, smaller cities offer a better understanding of economic dynamics from a “bottom up” perspective. Any effective reform must therefore go beyond a strictly legal approach to fully incorporate the social, economic, and intersectional dimensions of land issues. This blog post demonstrates that far from being independent indicators that can be analysed separately, forum shopping and intersectionality are deeply intertwined and keep shaping urban land practices in West African secondary cities in general and in Bouaké in particular.
Reference List
Berry, Sara. 2009. Property, authority and citizenship: land claims, politics and the dynamics of social division in West Africa. Development and Change. 40 (1): 23–45.
Crenshaw, K. 1991. Mapping the margins: intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review. 43 (6): 1241–1299.
Djah, A J. 2021. Impact socio-spatial de la speculation foncière dans un contexte de demande croissante en logement dans la ville de Bouaké (Côte d’Ivoire). Journal De La Recherche Scientifique De l’Université De Lomé. 23(2): 87–106.
Firmin-Sellers, K. 2000. Custom, capitalism, and the state: the origins of insecure land tenure in West Africa. Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics.156 (3): 513–530.
Lefèbvre, H. 1967. Le droit à la ville. L’homme et la société. (6): 29–35.
Von Benda-Beckmann, K. 1981. Forum shopping and shopping forums: dispute processing in a Minangkabau village in West Sumatra. The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law. 13 (19): 117–159.
Zongo, M. 2009. Terre d’Etat, Loi des Ancêtres ? Les Conflits Fonciers et Leurs Procédures de Règlement dans l’Ouest du Burkina Faso. Cahiers du CERLESHS. 24 (33): 119–143.
- Authors like Firmin-Sellers (2000) have highlighted the caution required when using the term “customary rights”, due to its colonial construction and the fact that “customary” and “traditional” are oftentimes used as if they were static rather than constantly prone to various influences and changes throughout time. [↩]
- Les garants de la tradition. Interview Mr. Konaté, Bouaké dweller, Bouaké, December 1, 2015. [↩]
- Décret N° 2013-482 du 2 Juillet 2013 Portant modalités d’application de l’ordonnance fixant les règles d’acquisition de la propriété des terrains urbains URL: http://www.loidici.com/Nouveauxtextes/DecretPropriete%20des%20terrains%20urbains.php. [↩]
- “Ce sont les vrais gardiens de la terre”. Conversation with Mr. Koffi, land owner, Bouaké, September 22, 2019. [↩]
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Aïdas Sanogo (May 7, 2026). Land Tenure and “Right to the City” in Bouaké, Côte d’Ivoire: What do “Forum Shopping” and “Intersectionality” Got to Do with It? Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa - Blog. Retrieved June 7, 2026 from https://miasa.hypotheses.org/5676



