_no case may a lettre de notification stand in the stead of a use right title’. If the mention of a lettre d’attribution actually refers to a lettre de notification, then the LA is an administrative document._ **_(3)_** _There are no figures about the total number of precarious titles issued in Mali. Collecting these figures from administrative sources would be possible but in practice extremely difficult_ **_(4)_** _Some indicative figures concerning the number of landowning households with TF or land with TF are available for Bamako District and Kati cercle. The number of households in Mali who are owners with a TF is available from the 2009 Census: 117,897, 8.5% of all owners. More than half of those who have a TF in urban Mali live in Bamako District (36,895) where 38.6% of owners have a TF. In the Kati cercle, according to Djiré (2013), the number of plots with TF has been multiplied by 4.7 between the beginning of 2005 (14,314) and the end of 2012 (66,988). The author notes a sharp acceleration of delivery in 2011 and 2012._ It can be seen from Table 3.1 above that here is a gap between lawful and actual practices. In this context, relying on official documents (see Annex 3.1 for laws, decrees and other texts on land and tenure) alone cannot provide a sufficient understanding of land tenure situations. For this reason, particular attention has been given to actual practices. Interviews with informants, including with agents in charge of the land administration, reveal that they did not always agree on the meaning of words used to describe land tenure situations. Informants at the _commune_ and DRDC/Koulikoro levels told us that some practices, which should have disappeared following the power given to local authorities to allocate land<sup>29</sup> , were persisting. For instance, although he was no longer entitled to do so, the _préfet_ of Kati _cercle_ continued to issue _permis d’occuper_ . Despite the fact that the terms _lettre d’attribution_ (LA) and _permis d’occuper_ should have disappeared and been replaced by _concessions urbaine/rurale à usage d’habitation_<sup>30</sup> , our informants still used them. People we spoke to were often hesitant about the nature and name of the document that should back their rights. For example, the _attestation de vente authentifiée_ (see Annex 4.1), which grants no rights, is often considered by its holder as sufficient proof of the right to occupy a plot. This means that many people believe they hold the rights to a plot and are totally helpless when individuals or companies present other documents and seek to expel them from the plot. More details on the explanations for, and consequences of, the gaps between actual and legal practices can be found in section 6.

# **3.1. The customary land delivery channel (mainly informal)**

# **3.1.1. Customary tenure in Mali**

Customary land "ownership" refers to the communal possession of rights to use and allocate cropping and grazing land by a group sharing the same cultural identity. During the past two decades, customary land management practices have undergone various adjustments (Toulmin and Quan, 2000). In most countries, they have proved to have a surprising capacity to adapt to the new economic and social context introduced by the globalization of national economies and to the rapid spatial expansion of urban areas. In Mali, customary tenure is recognized in article 43 of the 2000 Land Code, which states that individual or collective customary right holders cannot be deprived of these rights, except in the public interest and with fair compensation (Djiré and Traoré, 2008). However, the implementing provisions of the Land Code have not yet been adopted. This issue was addressed at the National Land Conference ( _Etats généraux du foncier_ , see République du Mali, 2009a), but no decision has been made with regard to the formal recognition of customary tenure and transferability of customary rights. The state may register customary land in its own name ( _immatriculation_ ); in practice, it will “purge” customary rights, meaning that it offers no compensation for loss of the land but only for the loss of standing crops and other improvements made to the land. People are not entitled to compensation if, when customary land has been registered in this way, they are occupying it with authorization from customary landholders but have no administrative documents. They may, however, be allowed to regularize their occupancy and then fall into the category of people using the public land delivery channel to access land (see Subsection 3.2 below).

It should be noted that customary land is relatively scarce within Bamako District today, where most of it has already been sold out, but it is still abundant in peri-urban rural _communes_ and in the rural hinterland of the city.

Although customary ownership is legally recognized in rural areas in Mali, most customary owners do not have any document that guarantees their rights. Customary legitimacy is based on length of occupancy and the collective memory that gives much value to oral agreements.

> 29  Law of February 12, 2002, and decree of March 6, 2002. 30 See note 2 in Table 3.1.

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