The Death of Custom: Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

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The Death of Custom: Winners and Losers in the Legal The Death of Custom: Winners and Losers in the Legal

Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

Thomas A. Kelley III

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Volume 47 No. 1

SYRACUSE JOURNAL

OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

AND COMMERCE

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF LAW

The Death of Custom: Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban

Land in Niger

Thomas A. Kelley

Pages 57-109

Cite as: 46 SYRACUSE J. INT’L L. & COM. ISSN 0093-0709

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* Thomas A. Kelley is the James Dickson Phillips, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the

University of North Carolina School of Law Institute for Innovation. Professor Kelley earned a B.A. from

Harvard University and a J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law. Before attending law school,

Professor Kelley served as a United States Peace Corps volunteer in the Republic of Niger. After law school,

Professor Kelley clerked for James Dickson Phillips on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Death of Custom: Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land

in Niger

Thomas A. Kelley*

I. Introduction

II. About Niger

III. Existing Customary Land Law in Niger

A. The Customary Law Archetype

B. Complicating the Picture of Customary Law

1. The Influence of Colonialism

2. The Influence of Islam

3. The Influence of Economic Liberalization

4. The influence of Government Decentralization

5. Summary

IV. The Death of Customary Law in Peri-Urban Niger

A. History of Land in Niamey and Environs

B. Decentralization Struggles Lead to Chaos in Urban and Peri-Urban Land

Management

C. Enter the Private Developers

D. The Current Situation

E. Summary

V. Winners and Losers when Peri-Urban Land is Transformed from Customary to

Formal

A. Winners

1. Private Real Estate Developers and Investors and the Government

Officials with Whom They Collaborate

B. Losers

1. Intermediate Losers: Secondary Rights Holders

2. Long-Term Losers

a. Those Who Depend on Customary Land for Livelihoods

b. Those Who Define Themselves, Their Communities, Their

History, and Their Religion with Reference to Land

VI. Conclusion

Kelley Syracuse J. Int. L. & Comm. Vol. 47.1.

Introduction

The population of Niamey, the capital city of the West African Republic of Niger, is

exploding.

Since urban residents need houses, large tracts of peri-urban

land around the city

are being transformed from fields to suburbs.

This land transformation is being accompanied

by a legal transformation from customary to formal state law.

As is true of most legal

transformations, this one is producing winners and losers.

The winners are those with access to

financial, political, and social capital who use their superior strength to take advantage of the

new rules.

The losers are the peasant farmers and their families who are uprooted from their

traditions and their main sources of livelihood.

Under customary law in rural Niger, land is inextricably interwoven with history, identity,

and religion.

One’s access to land depends on membership and good standing in a family, a

Hamadou Issaka, La Promotion Immoblière Informelle a Niamey: L’Irregularite Comme Reponse a la Crise du

Logement, URBANITES (Nov. 8, 2013), available at http://www.revue-urbanites.fr/la-promotion-immobiliere-

informelle-a- niamey-lirregularite-comme-reponse-a-la-crise-du-logement/ (last visited Sept. 27, 2019) (arguing

Niamey has undergone vertiginous growth); see The World Factbook (Niger) (People and Society), U.S. CENT.

INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, available at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ng.html

(last visited Sept. 27, 2019) (estimating Niger's rate of urbanization as 4.27% for 2015-2020, ranking 11th for

highest urbanization rate in the world).

There is no universally accepted definition of the term peri-urban. Beacon Mbiba & Marie Huchzeremey,

Contentious Development: Peri-Urban Studies in Sub-Saharan Africa, PROGRESS IN DEV. STUD. 113, 114 (2002).

However, it generally refers to land around the periphery of urban areas that includes elements of both rural and

urban use and where farmland is being converted to suburbs. See Achamyeleh Gashu Adam, Land Tenure in the

Changing Peri-Urban Areas of Ethiopia: The Case of Bahir Dar City, INT’L J. OF URB. & REGIONAL RES. 1970,

1970- 1971 (2014) (arguing peri-urban lands are places just outside municipal boundaries where urban and rural

coexist and where farmland is being converted to suburban house plots); Janine Ubink, Traditional Authority

Revisited: Popular Perceptions of Chiefs and Chieftaincy in Peri-Urban Ghana, J. LEGAL PLURALISM &

UNOFFICIAL L. 123, 129 (2007) (defining peri-urban as “approximating a continuum from rural to urban”); See

also IGNASIO MALIZANI JIMU, EVERYDAY PRACTICES AND RELATIONS IN PERI-URBAN BLANTYRE, MALAWAI 69

(2012) (arguing peri-urban land is usually characterized by “the encroachment of the expanding urban area onto the

surrounding rural land . . . affecting the livelihood of small farmers” and where land goes from rural to urban and

from customary to statutory tenure).

See infra Part IV.D

See JIMU, supra note 2, at 69.

See infra notes 276-78 and accompanying text (arguing elites in developing countries always benefit from changes in

the law).

See infra Part V.A.

See infra Part V.B.

See Thomas Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets into Pigeon Holes: The Effects of Globalization and State Legal Reform in

Niger on Indigenous Zarma Law, 34 N.Y.U. J. INT’L. L. & POL.635, 680-691 (2002) (arguing land in Nigerien villages

is closely connected to spiritual beliefs, history, and community identity); see see also PARKER SHIPTON, MORTGAGING

Death of Custom:

Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

lineage group, and a village.

At the same time, land helps define those institutions.

Villagers

explain themselves, their family histories, and the linkages between families by recounting

stories of ancestors who founded their villages, usually by clearing the land for agricultural

use.

All males who descend from the original, land-clearing ancestors can claim membership

in the lineage and thus present-day access to land.

Rural land in Niger is also intertwined with spiritual beliefs. Land helps bind together the

temporal and spiritual worlds.

Villages are surrounded by all manner of spirits including the

black spirits (gangi bi) who controlled the land before humans arrived, and the spirits of

ancestors who made pacts with the gangi bi that permitted them to inhabit and exploit the land.

Those spirits intervene in the daily lives of rural people, sometimes helping them, sometimes

harming them.

Rural Nigerien people who lose their land as a result of urbanization lose their

connections to these powerful practical and symbolic touchstones that bring order and meaning

to their lives, but that is not all they lose. Because most rural Nigeriens rely on subsistence

farming, many will also lose their livelihoods.

In Niger, there is no equivalent of Detroit or

THE ANCESTORS: IDEOLOGIES OF ATTACHMENT IN AFRICA 117 (2009) (arguing land is tightly tied up with social

position and also with “the most intimate, emotionally charged dimensions of personhood and pride”).

Thomas Kelley, Unintended Consequences of Legal Westernization in Niger: Harming Contemporary Slaves by

Reconceptualizing Property, 56 AM. J. COMP. L. 999, 1006-07; Parker Shipton & Mitzi Goheen, Understanding

African Land-Holding: Power, Wealth, and Meaning, 62 AFR. J. OF THE INT’L AFR. INST. 307, 307 (1992) (arguing

land in Africa helps “define personal and social identities”); see SHIPTON, supra note 8, at 110 (arguing in East

Africa, people belong to their land).

See Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 663 (describing a Nigerien village that traces its history to a group of

brothers who dug a well and cleared the bush around it).

Id.

Unintended Consequences, supra note 9, at 1006-08.

See id. at 1007 (arguing Nigerien traditional leaders ensure land is used in ways approved by the spirits).

See infra note 71 and accompanying text.

Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 647-48; Unintended Consequences, supra note 9, at 107.

The World Factbook (Niger) (People and Society), U.S. CENT. INTELLIGENCE AGENCY , available at

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ng.html (last visited Sept. 27, 2019); see U.N. Exec.

Bd. of the U. N. Dev. Programme, the U. N. Population Fund and the U. N. Off. for Project Servs., Country

Programme Document for Niger (2019-2021), ¶ 14, U.N. Doc. GEN/N18/393/74/N1839374 (Nov. 21, 2018) (arguing

that a large part of the Nigereian population is dependent on subsistence farming).

Kelley Syracuse J. Int. L. & Comm. Vol. 47.1.

Pittsburg where displaced agricultural workers can find wage labor,

so many will simply

starve.

This paper explores Niger’s peri-urban transition in land use and law. Part II provides

background on Niger with an emphasis on the demographics that explain why the country is

facing a potentially cataclysmic if slow-moving land crisis. Part III will indulge in a step often

skipped by legal scholars and development practitioners: it will explore in some detail the

customary law that governs land use in rural areas. Without understanding customary law, one

cannot understand the enormity of the loss that will result when fields become suburbs. Part IV

will shift the lens to the city and describe the legal and political context that has permitted

Niamey’s explosive and largely unregulated growth. It notes that when formal state law and

customary law bump into one another in peri-urban areas, formal law almost always prevails: the

land is irrevocably transformed from a key element of a social, historical, and spiritual complex,

into a commodity. Part V describes in detail who wins and who loses as a result of the

transformation. The paper concludes that the wealthy and well-connected win, while peasant

farmers lose. They lose their livelihoods and, just as important, the customary law that has

sustained their communities through centuries of adversity.

II.

About Niger

Niger is among the poorest, least developed countries in the world.

One reason is its

See Interview with Hamdallaye Canton Chief, in Hamdallaye, Republic of Niger (May 1, 2018) (arguing “[i]f

peasant farmers sell their land, what will they do? It’s not as if there are factories in the city where they can go find

jobs”); see also SHIPTON, supra note 8, at 33 (arguing that in the U.S. urban employment cushioned the blow from

rural land dispossession but that in Africa no such safety net exists).

See infra Part V.B.2.a (describing the livelihood effects of rural Nigeriens losing access to agricultural land).

Human Development Reports: Human Development Data (1990-2017), U.N. DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM, available at

http://hdr.undp.org/en/data (last visited Sept. 27, 2019) (ranking Niger as the poorest country in the world out of all 189

countries listed); The World Factbook (Niger) (Introduction), U.S. CENT. INTELLIGENCE AGENCY , available at

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ng.html (last visited Sept. 27, 2019) ("Niger is one of

the poorest countries in the world with minimal government services and insufficient funds to develop its resource

base, and is ranked last in the world on the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Index.").

Death of Custom:

Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

paucity of natural resources.

It is landlocked and two-thirds of its surface is located in the

parched Sahara Desert,

a zone unsuitable for agricultural production.

The southern third of

the country, where most of the population lives,

is only marginally more fecund.

The soils

there tend to be sandy and of poor quality,

watercourses are rare, and rainfall, upon which most

farmers depend,

is sparse and variable.

These challenging geographic and climatic realities

are troubling in a country where most peoples’ livelihood depends on agriculture.

Although Niger’s land is unproductive, it is not completely bereft of natural resources. The World Factbook (Niger)

(Geography), U.S. CENT. INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, available at https://www.cia.gov/ library/publications/the-world-

factbook/geos/ng.html (last visited Sept. 27, 2019) (listing Niger's natural resources as uranium, coal, iron ore, tin,

phosphates, gold, molybdenum, gypsum, salt, and petroleum). It has significant uranium deposits in its northern

mountains, the proceeds of which led to a minor economic boom in the 1970s. Ursula Meyer, Negocier l’acces, la

propriete et l’autorité publique en marge de la ville. Enjeux foncier a Niamey et production d’Etat au Niger 108 (2016)

(doctoral thesis presented to the Faculty of Geosciences and the Environment, Universitiy of Lausanne) (on file with

author). But uranium prices dropped in the 1980s as nuclear power fell out of favor in the developed world, and the

mines have done little to lift Niger out of poverty. Gabriella Korling, In Search of the State, An Ethnography of Public

Service Provision in Urban Niger 58 (2011) (doctoral dissertation in Cultural Anthropology, Uppsala Universitet in

Sweden) (arguing uranium prices fell in the late 1970s). More recently, petroleum deposits have been identified in

northeastern Niger. The World Factbook (Niger), supra note 1; Meyer, supra note 20, at 120 (referring to a recent

increase in mining and oil extraction).

U.N. Int'l Human Rights Instruments, Common Core Document Forming Part of the Reports of States Parties: the

Niger, ¶ 1, U.N. Doc. GEN/G18/075/27/G1807527 (May 22, 2018) ("Located in the eastern part of western Africa, the

Niger is a landlocked country with a surface area of 1,267,000 km

. Two thirds of the national territory is in the

Saharan zone."); The World Factbook (Niger) (Geography), U.S. CENT. INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, available at

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ng.html (last visited Sept. 27, 2019) ("[L]andlocked;

one of the hottest countries in the world; northern four-fifths is desert, southern one-fifth is savanna, suitable for

livestock and limited agriculture[.]"); Meyer, supra note 20, at 91.

Common Core, supra note 21, ¶ 1.

The World Factbook (Niger) (Geography), U.S. CENT. INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, available at

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ng.html (last visited Sept. 27, 2019) ("[M]ajority of

the populace is located in the southernmost extreme of the country along the border with Nigeria and Benin[.]");

Meyer, supra note 20, at 91 (arguing 80% of Niger’s population lives in the southern third of the country).

The World Factbook (Niger) (Geography), U.S. CENT. INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, available at

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ng.html (last visited Sept. 27, 2019) (reporting that

only 12.3% of Niger's land is "arable").

Irahimn Yahaya Ibrahim, Niger in the Face of the Sahelo-Saharan Islamic Insurgency: Precarious Stability in a

Troubled Neighborhood5 (Sahel Research Group, Working Paper No. 004, 2014).

The World Factbook (Niger) (Geography), U.S. CENT. INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, available at

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ng.html (last visited Sept. 27, 2019) (reporting that

Niger has only 300km of waterways, ranking 93 out of 107 countries listed); Florence Bron-Saidatou, La Gouvernance

Fonciere au Niger: Malgre des Acquis, de Nombreuses Difficultes 6 (2015) (working paper produced by a coalition of

French Development Agencies).

Bron-Saidatou, supra note 26, at 6; see Ambe J. Njoh, The Role and Goals of the State in Urban Development in

Niger, 30 HABITAT INT’L 540, 545 (2006) (referring to Niger’s “low rainfall”).

The World Factbook: Africa (Niger), U.S. CENT. INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, available at

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ng.html (last visited Sept. 27, 2019) (arguing that

agriculture provides a livelihood for more than 80% of Niger's population).

Kelley Syracuse J. Int. L. & Comm. Vol. 47.1.

Approximately 85% of Niger’s population engages in agricultural work and most people

depend, at least in part, on subsistence farming for their food.

Irrigation is rare, so rainfed

agriculture is vital to peoples’ survival; however, climate change is resulting in a shrinking of

Niger’s rainy season, cutting further into agricultural productivity.

Due to decreasing yields,

most households supplement their livelihood by engaging in animal husbandry,

wage labor, and

informal small business activity.

Niger’s deteriorating agricultural conditions are particularly alarming when one considers

how many mouths there are to feed. The country’s population growth rate is the highest in the

world at 3.9%.

In the early 1960s, around the time of Niger’s independence from France, Niger

had approximately 4.3 million inhabitants.

By 2012, the population had expanded to 17

million.

Estimates put the current population at over 20 million

and, if the growth trends

continue, 33 million by 2030.

The converging trends of land degradation and population growth means that many

more people, almost all of whom need arable land to feed themselves, must crowd onto ever-

The World Factbook (Niger) (People and Society), U.S. CENT. INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, available at

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ng.html (last visited Sept. 27, 2019); see

Country Programme, supra note 16 (arguing that a large part of the Nigereian population is dependent on

subsistence farming).

The World Factbook: Africa (Niger), supra note 29 (arguing that rainfall in Niger is declining); Bron-Saidatou,

supra note 26, at 8.

Bron-Saidatou, supra note 26, at 6 (arguing 43.2% of Niger’s population engages in animal husbandry).

See The World Bank, Republic of Niger Priorities for Ending Poverty and Boosting Shared Prosperity Systematic

Country Diagnostic, 12, Report No. 115661-NE (Nov. 28, 2017).

The World Factbook: Africa (Niger), supra, note 29 ("Niger has the highest total fertility rate (TFR) of any

country in the world, averaging close to 7 children per woman in 2016."); Exec. Bd. of the U. N. Dev. Programme,

the U. N. Population Fund and the U. N. Off. for Project Servs., U.N. Population Fund Country Programme

Document for Niger, ¶ 1, U.N. Doc. DP/FPA/CPD/NER/9 (Nov. 27, 2018) ("Niger’s annual demographic growth rate

is the highest in the world, at 3.9 per cent; its population, currently 17,138,707, will double every 18 years."); The

World Bank, supra note 32, at ¶ 52 (arguing at present, an average Nigerien woman experiences 7.3 live births

during her lifetime).

Bron-Saidatou, supra note 26, at 4.

Id.

Niger, THE WORLD BANK, available at https://data.worldbank.org/country/niger?view=chart (last visited Sept. 27,

2019) (reporting Niger's population as 21,602,472 in 2017); Country Programme, supra note 16, ¶ 1 (estimating

Niger's population at 21,466,862 as of 2017).

See The World Bank, supra note 36.

Death of Custom:

Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

smaller fields upon which less and less rain is falling.

The overcrowding, in turn, exacerbates

problems with soil fertility. As the expanding population seeks to feed itself by planting ever-

more staple crops, the amount of fallow land decreases, further diminishing the fields’

productive capacity.

The end result is that contemporary Niger experiences periodic acute

food crises and 16.7% of children under the age of 5 are chronically malnourished.

Rapid, poorly planned and poorly regulated urbanization is exacerbating the crisis in

rural land and livelihoods.

Although Niger is still a predominantly rural society, its rate of

urbanization is among the highest in the world.

The challenging demographic and climatic

conditions described in preceding paragraphs are driving the rural population –particularly

young men

– towards the city.

Further, the lure of the city has been enhanced by the rise of

economic liberalization and structural adjustment policies, which have compelled the Nigerien

state to withdraw much of its healthcare, education, and infrastructure investment from rural

areas.

Combined, these factors have led to sizzling growth in Niamey’s population.

The World Factbook: Africa (Niger), supra note 29; see also Interview with Niamey, Former Resident of Goudel,

in Republic of Niger (Apr. 30, 2018) (arguing the shrinking rainy season will no longer support the best strains of

millet, Niger’s staple crop).

Country Programme, supra note 16, ¶ 5 ("Niger’s challenges also result from population pressure, the adverse

effects of climate change, inadequate agricultural practices and resulting land degradation."); Bron-Saidatou, supra

note 26, at 8 (arguing population pressure is leading to shorter fallow periods and the overall degradation of soils);

Interview with Niamey, Judge, Republic of Niger (May 9, 2018) (arguing that due to population pressure it is no longer

possible to let land lie fallow so that it is overcultivated); see generally Hamdallaye, supra note 17 (arguing there is

“enormous pressure on land” in Niger).

The World Bank, supra note 32, ¶ 152 ("[B]eing malnourished is almost normal (44 percent of children [are]

stunted)[.]"); see Ibrahim, supra note 25, at 5 (arguing acute malnutrition touches 16.7% of Inger’s children under

5).

Meyer, supra note 20, at 90 (arguing rural land loss is causing Nigeriens to seek refuge in cities); see infra notes

259-260 and accompanying text (arguing urban expansion in Niger is guided by private interests and poorly regulated).

See The World Factbook (Niger) (People and Society), U.S. CENT. INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, available at

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ng.html (last visited Sept. 27, 2019) (estimating

Niger's rate of urbanization as 4.27% for 2015-2020, which ranks 11th for highest urbanization rate in the world).

See THE WORLD BANK, REPUBLIC OF NIGER: PRIORITIES FOR ENDING POVERTY AND BOOSTING SHARED

PROSPERITY: SYSTEMATIC COUNTRY DIAGNOSTIC ¶ 40 (Report No. 115661-NE) (2017).

Issaka, supra note 1 (arguing thousands of rural citizens seek a better life in Niamey every year and most have no

qualifications); Meyer, supra note 20, at 103, 105 (arguing Niger sees spikes in urban population growth at times of

famine).

Meyer, note 20, at 110; see Körling, supra note 20, at 21 (arguing Niamey is privileged over rural areas in both

health and education).

Issaka, supra note 1.

Kelley Syracuse J. Int. L. & Comm. Vol. 47.1.

Specifically, in 1977, the capital counted 243,000 residents; by 2000, the number was 650,000;

today, estimates run as high as 1.5 million.

Because all of these new arrivals need shelter, and

because most residential construction in Niger is in the form of one-story,

metal-roofed, mud

and cement houses surrounded by small walled compounds,

the city is gobbling up large

swaths of agricultural land each year and irreversibly converting it into suburban house plots.

In sum, Niger is in the midst of a vicious cycle. Due largely to demographic and climatic

pressures on agricultural land, ever more people are seeking sustenance in the city. As the city

grows, it devours the agricultural land that is the main source of food – even if an increasingly

feeble one – for Nigeriens who remain in rural communities. As the following sections will

demonstrate, when real estate developers and investors convert fields to suburbs, rural people

lose not only their source of food but their way of life: a social and spiritual identity that is

rooted in, and to large extent defined by, land.

III.

Existing Customary

Land Law in Rural Niger

Customary land law has been remarkably resilient in Niger.

In spite of numerous attempts

by Niger’s government during the 20

and 21

centuries to weaken or eliminate it,

most of

Körling supra note 20, at 77; Common Core, supra note 21, Table 1 (reporting Niamey's population as 397,437 in

1988, 725,030 in 2001, and 1,011,277 in 2012); see The World Factbook: Africa (Niger), supra note 29 (estimating

Niamey's population at 1.214 million in 2018).

See Henri Kokou Motcho, Urbanisation et Role de la Chefferie Traditionnelle dans la Communaute Urbaine de

Niamey, 229 LES CAHIERS D’OUTRE-MER, REVUE DE GEOGRAPHIE DE BORDEAUX 73, 74 (2005) (arguing that

Niamey’s expansion has included few multi-story buildings).

See id. at 2 (arguing housing density is low in Niamey because most structures are single-story).

See infra notes 271-72 and accompanying text.

Custom in Africa is a contested and controversial construct. Scholars generally reject the idea that custom was a

static, self-contained body of pristine norms that existed in pre-colonial times. Sara Berry, Privatization and the

Politics of Belonging in West Africa, in LAND AND THE POLITICS OF BELONGING IN WEST AFRICA 241, 245

(Richard Kuba & Carola Lentz eds., 2013). Instead, they view custom as endlessly dynamic and in recent centuries

developed “through interactions between colonial officials and their subjects, each drawing selectively on historical

precedents to influence one another and make the best of changing circumstances.” Id. Colonial governments made

attempts to define, and at times manipulate, custom in ways that supported the state’s authority. Squeezing Parakeets,

supra note 8, at 652-55. But colonial and post-colonial states rarely succeeded in inventing custom from whole cloth

and “have often exercised little real control of it.” Shipton & Goheen, supra note 9, at 308.

See Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 656-57; Thomas Kelley, Apples to Oranges: Epistemological Dissonance

in the Human Rights Case Hadijatou Mani v. Niger, 32 QUINNIPIAC U. L. REV. 311, 336-37 (2014).

See Bron-Saidatou, supra note 26, at 11-12 (arguing the Nigerien state passed several laws intended to limit

traditional leaders’ authority over land); Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 658, n. 105-06 (arguing Niger’s post-

independence government passed laws aimed and curbing chiefs’ authority over land, all to little effect).

Death of Custom:

Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

Niger’s rural land is still governed by it.

From the perspective of a western-trained lawyer it can

be diffuse and confusing,

but it must be grappled with if one is to understand the profound legal,

social, and spiritual transformation the country is undergoing as urban areas encroach on farm

land. The following discussion will introduce a somewhat idealized, archetypal version of

customary land law before showing how it has been affected by colonialism, the rise of orthodox

Islam, and the pervading influence of globalization and economic liberalism.

The Customary Law Archetype

Descriptions of customary land law in Niger tend toward static, archetypal accounts

when in fact it is dynamic, variable, and often messy.

Still, the archetype is one that rural

Nigeriens recount, sometimes wistfully, when discussing their communities’ historic relationship

to land.

Thus, even if it does not provide a perfectly accurate history of customary land law, it

reveals much about rural peoples’ collective memory and values concerning land.

In rural Nigerien villages, the most enduring and powerful land rights are those of first-

comers.

Every village has a founding story, often involving brothers or male cousins who left

Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 659-60 (arguing most rural people in Niger base land claims on custom and

often have no knowledge and no desire to know what formal state law would say about the matter).

Unintended Consequences, supra note 9, at 1008.

See Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 653 (arguing the French colonialists in Niger attempted to explain

customary law in terms of fixed rules).

See Janine M. Ubink, Tenure Security: Wishful Policy Thinking or Reality? A Case from Peri-Urban Ghana, 51 J.

Afr. L. 215, 231 (2007) (arguing customary law in Ghana is “fluid, relational and negotiable” and “constantly

recreated and disputed); SHIPTON, supra note 8, at 230 (arguing Kenyan customary land law is endlessly dynamic);

Unintended Consequences, supra note 9, at 1006 (referring to Niger’s land use customs as “evolving, fluid, and

negotiable”).

Interview with Village Chief in Gassangourni, Republic of Niger (May 18, 2000) and Interview with Yaye Issa and

Issafou Lali (May 22, 1996); Interview with Group of Villagers (ne 1, 1996); Interview with Group of Villagers in

Fandou-Berri, Republic of Niger (May 17, 2000 (morning)).

See id.

Richard Kuba, Spiritual Hierarchies and Unholy Alliances: Competing Earth Priests in a Context of Migration in

Southwestern Burkina Faso, in LAND AND THE POLITICS OF BELONGING IN WEST AFRICA 57, 60 (Richard Kuba &

Carola Lentz eds., 2006) (arguing in a West African context that land rights arise from first-comers who made pacts

with local deities); Sten Hagberg, Money, Ritual and the Politics of Belonging in Land Transactions in Western

Burkina Faso, in LAND AND THE POLITICS OF BELONGING IN WEST AFRICA 99, 103 (Richard Kuba & Carola Lentz

eds., 2006) (referring to the oldest male descendant establishing land rights by forming an original pact with the

spirits); Meyer, supra note 20, at 125 (arguing Niger’s land law is based largely on “rights of the first to clear”).

Kelley Syracuse J. Int. L. & Comm. Vol. 47.1.

their natal village in search of adventure or due to a rift within their lineage.

In some accounts,

the men began by capturing slaves and forcing them to dig a well.

The well became the

symbolic and practical center of the new village.

Starting from the circumference of the well,

the founders traced pie-shaped lots of land that stretched indefinitely into the surrounding

bush.

Nobody paid close attention to the claims’ outer boundaries because land was an

inexhaustible resource.

Over time, men would solidify their claims to land by clearing the

bush and tilling the soil.

Although there seem not to have been hard and fast rules on the

matter, leaving the land untouched for too long could weaken a claim of access.

A father could generally expect that the land he controlled would pass to his sons since

inheritance passed through the male line.

The family land would never be formally divided,

but each son would be apportioned a parcel that he would control until he divided it among his

own sons.

The lineage head, the village chief, the land chief (laabukoy), and the heads of

families within the lineage would decide how the parcels of land would be divided among young

men.

The first-comers formed alliances with the original black spirits (gangi bi) who inhabited

See Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 663 (describing the village of Fandou Berri’s founding by a famous

warrior and his brothers who captured slaves and compelled them to dig a well to sustain the village);

Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 663 (describing the village of Fandou Berri’s founding by a warrior and his

brothers who captured slaves and compelled them to dig a well to sustain the village); Unintended Consequences,

supra note 9, at 1027 (describing a similar story regarding the village of Saabu Dey).

JEAN-PIERRE OLIVIER DE SARDAN, LES SOCIETES SONGHAY-ZARMA (NIGER-MALI) 663 (1984)

(describing the symbolic importance of well digging in Nigerien culture).

Interview with Saabu Dey village chief and group of elders, in Saabu Dey, Republic of Niger (December 5, 2003).A

somewhat different version of founders’ land rights, one I have heard only once, involves founders galloping on

horseback, throwing spears into the earth, and vying to knock one another off if there was a disagreement about

boundaries. Interview with Former Resident of Goudel (April 30, 2018). Interview with Niamey, supra note 38.

See Meyer, supra note 20, at 125 (arguing agricultural land in Niger was historically abundant and “if a man had

reason he could simply clear land and benefit from its fruits”)

Id.

Kelley, supra note 9, at 1007; Kelley, supra note 8, at 682, n. 176.

Kelley, supra note 8, at 683.

Kelley, supra note 8, at 681, n. 175. Typically, young males would work in their father’s fields, and would not be

assigned a separate plot until they married.

Kelley, supra note 9, at 1007.

Death of Custom:

Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

the bush, and those alliances had to be nurtured and respected by subsequent generations.

Because the spirit world, like the temporal world, was dynamic and ever changing,

other

actors also came to inhabit the spiritual realm, including the spirits of villagers’ ancestors.

the spirits were pleased, villagers in the temporal world would prosper in their daily lives.

The

rains would fall gently and persistently, while locusts and other pestilence would stay away. If

the spirits were displeased, villagers would suffer crop failure, sickness, and death.

Some members of the community were particularly skillful at understanding and

addressing the spirits’ demands.

The land chief, often the same person as the village chief,

would ensure that villagers’ use of land would not cause offense.

In instances where the spirits

had been offended, the community could organize a spirit possession ceremony to communicate

directly between the realms.

During these ceremonies, spirits would inhabit the bodies of

certain villagers and speak directly to the gathered throng.

Other villagers, referred to as

zimas, were skilled at summoning the spirits to the temporal world to visit punishments and

rewards upon living people or, conversely, to protect threatened humans from harm.

Chiefs in Niger historically played – and still play – important roles in determining access

See Kelley, supra note 8, at 646.

See id.

See id, at 646-47.

See id; see also Amadou supra note 61, at 9 (arguing villagers in a Nigerien river village, Karey Kopto, appeal to

the spirits to ensure good fishing, good harvests, and to avoid sickness).

Kelley, Unintended Consequences, supra note 9, at 1007; see Hagberg, supra note 60, at 99 (arguing earth priests

and elders regard the earth “as a divinity and fear that the violation of rituals may endanger not merely the individual’s

well-being but community life in general”).

See Amadou, supra note 61, at 3 (describing a village chief in southern Niger who descended directly from village

founders and who therefore had the ability to “remain in permanent contact with the invisible world,” appease the

spirits and protect the village).

Kelley, supra note 9, at 1007.

Kelley, supra note 8, at 647.

I witnessed a spirit possession ceremony in a rural Zarma village in 1987. A powerful storm had blown through the

village destroying crops and several grass huts in which villagers lived. An interlocutor explained that participants

wanted to know why the damage had been unleashed. When I asked whom they were communicating with, they

answered “irikoy,” which translates to “our keeper.” It is the term that most Zarma people use when they referring to

God in the Islamic tradition.

See Amadou, supra note 61, at 4 (describing a zima as a priest healer and an ally of the spirits).

Kelley Syracuse J. Int. L. & Comm. Vol. 47.1.

to land.

Typically, only direct descendants of a village’s founders could vie for the position of

village chief.

Once selected, he had little prescriptive power and instead acted as first among

equals, convening village leaders and lineage heads to form consensus.

Niger’s history is

replete with efforts by the state – at first the colonial regime, later post-independence

governments – to manipulate, coopt, or diminish the chiefs and their authority.

The position of

village chief, has, however, endured and today is an intriguing amalgam. Chiefs are rooted in

tradition and considered, at least in many communities, legitimate sources of authority.

At the

same time, they act as low-level administrators for the state.

They collect taxes, conciliate local

disputes, and, crucially, endorse land transactions.

Higher-level regional chiefs, generally referred to as canton chiefs (chefs de canton),

also exercised influence over land, but they enjoyed less historical legitimacy.

Cantons were

geographic regional divisions imported to Niger by the French colonizers.

To aid their

administration of the vast territory (one they had little interest in except its value in blocking

Great Britain’s colonial expansion),

the French invented chieftaincies to rule over the cantons

See Kelley, supra note 9, at 1019; see also Meyers, infra notes 171-72 and accompanying text (arguing rural

people in Niger still prefer to deal with chiefs on matters involving land).

See Kelley, supra note 8, at 653; Amadou, supra note 61, at 3 (arguing the chief of a village in southern Niger

represents legitimate authority, that he presides over political and land-related decisions, and that the position of chief

is elected from among descendants of the family of the first occupants).

See Kelley, supra note 8, at 653.

See Bron-Saidatou, supra note 26, at 11 (arguing the colonial and post-independence governments passed various

laws intended to diminish chiefs’ authority); see also Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 658, n. 106.

See Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 655 (arguing the position of village chief predated the arrival of

the French and so its legitimacy survived colonialists’ machinations); Abdourahaman Chaibou, Les Judge, Le Cadis,

le Chef et les Autres . . . REVUE JURIDIQUE DE SAMAN 5 (1998) (arguing chiefs in Niger act as both legitimate

traditional leaders and as low-level agents of the modern state).

See Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 655 (arguing the position of village chief predated the arrival of

the French and so its legitimacy survived colonialists’ machinations); Chaibou, supra note 85, at 5.

See infra notes 297-301 and accompanying text.

Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 654.

Id.

See Meyer, supra note 20, at 97 (arguing the French occupied Niger to prevent the British from expanding

northward from Sokoto (in present-day Nigeria) and to facilitate France’s plans to sweep across the continent from

Dakar to Djibouti); Korling, supra note 20, at 43 (arguing the French’s interest in Niger was political and strategic,

not economic); Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 651-52.

Death of Custom:

Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

they had just created.

In some instances, the canton boundaries were in approximate accord with

the domains of pre-colonial regional chiefs, and the new chefs de canton retained at least some

legitimacy in the eyes of rural people.

But the French filled many of the chef de canton

positions with their own toadies, including some who were said to come from Niger’s slave class

and therefore lacked legitimate claim to positions of customary leadership.

Rural Nigeriens strongly prefer to resolve their disputes at the family or lineage levels.

To involve a chief in a dispute or, worse yet a state institution, is to admit that family patriarchs

have failed in their duties.

However, where disputes cannot be resolved by lineage heads,

villagers call upon chiefs to conciliate.

In deciding among competing access claims, chiefs

apply no fixed rules and followed no established procedures.

Instead, they gather historical

evidence from villagers with the longest memories.

Whose ancestor cleared the parcel of land

at issue? Did the ancestor give the parcel to another individual, or was it only a loan? Who

planted the fruit trees on edge of the parcel or dug the well, since both these actions are strong

evidence of access rights?

100

Having brought that history to light, the chief would steer the

disputants toward a resolution.

101

Crucially, the resolution often would take account of the

Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 654.

Id. at 655.

See Meyer, supra note 20, at 103 (arguing the first Canton Chief in Niamey was viewed as a French collaborator).

Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 668.

Id.

Based on many of performing ethnographic research in rural parts of Niger, I can report generally that land disputes

arise for various reasons. Villagers might disagree over which founder laid claim to a particular tract of land, or indeed,

whether a particular ancestor was or was not among the village founders. They might disagree about boundaries

between fields, which typically were (and are) marked by narrow uncultivated strips of land and immovable objects

such as trees. Often, especially in more recent times, village disputes involve disagreement over whether founder’s

lineage gave a field to a late-comer and his descendants (in some instances slaves), or merely loaned it.

Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 670-71.

See, e.g., Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 685-86.

100

Interview with Canton Chief of Koure, Niamey, Republic of Niger (May 3, 2018).

101

I participated in such a dispute resolution gathering in 1986 in the Nigerien village of Fandou Berri. At the time, I

was a Peace Corps volunteer living in the village, and to demonstrate my bona fides, I cultivated my own half-

hectare of millet, the staple crop. Not long before the harvest, a herder’s son fell asleep (at least that was his story)

and his flock wandered into my field and ate much of my crop. In a country where most people’s livelihoods are

based on subsistence agriculture, this was a gravely serious matter. The village chief and a respected marabout

brought the shepherd’s father and uncles to my hut and, after much discussion, agreed that the family would

apologize and, after the harvest, give me a quantity of their grain. I agreed that the resolution as fair, but declined to

Kelley Syracuse J. Int. L. & Comm. Vol. 47.1.

interests of the disputing parties, but also of their ancestors (who now live in the spirit realm),

the black spirits, and the unborn members of the community.

102

Chiefs also protected the prerogatives of secondary rights holders in rural land. Although

men inherited access to agricultural land, their rights were not the equivalent of ownership.

103

Other members of the community might have durable, enforceable rights to other uses of the

same land.

104

For example, women, who are not necessarily from the man’s family unit, might

have the right to gather straw to weave into mats as a source of pocket money.

105

They might

also have the right to pick sauce ingredients or plant a small garden.

106

Traditional healers

might have the right to harvest medicinal herbs.

107

Anyone in the community might have the

right to collect fodder after the harvest to feed farm animals.

108

Younger men and slaves

associated with the village might also have secondary, contingent rights in the land at issue.

These rights are not necessarily secure use rights that would permit them to exclude others, but

are culturally enforceable rights to plant and harvest crops to serve their specific needs.

109

From the existence of these durable, enforceable secondary rights under customary law, it

accept the grain on grounds I was collecting a stipend from Peace Corps and could afford to feed myself. In the end,

everyone was delighted: harmony was preserved.

102

Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 672.

103

Id. at 682 (arguing agricultural land in Niger is subject to “overlapping use claims”).

104

See SHIPTON, supra note 8, at 309 (arguing secondary rights holders in Kenya might claim access to thatched

grass, fuelwood, wild foods, or sources of water and minerals); Lawrence C. Becker, Land Sales and the

Transformation of Social Relations and Landscape in Peri-Urban Mali, 46 GEOFORUM 113,122 (2013) (arguing

secondary rights holders in Mali might have access to pasture, wood collection, and other economic activities);

Admos Chimhowu and Phil Woodhouse, Customary vs Private Property Rights? Dynamics and Trajectories of

Vernacular Land Markets in Sub-Saharan Africa, 6 J. OF AGRARIAN CHANGE 346, 347-48 (2006) (arguing

secondary rights in land act as “‘safety-net’ rights” for the community’s poor); see also CHRISTIAN LUND,

LOCAL POLITICS AND THE DYNAMICS OF PROPERTY IN AFRICA 16 (2008) (referring to the same types of

rights in land as “nested hierarchies of estates”); Aparna Polavarapu, Reconciling Indigenous and Women’s Rights to

Land in Sub- Saharan Africa, GA. J. INT’L. & COMP. L. 93, 114 (2013-2014) (referring to women’s secondary

rights in land as “nested” rights)

105

I base this statement on my own observation of women in the Nigerien village of Fandou Berri; see also Polavarapu,

supra note 104, at 111 (describing women’s secondary land rights under customary law in Botswana).

106

Kelley, supra note 8, at 682.

107

Id.

108

Id.

109

Kelley, Unintended Consequences, supra note 9, at 1007, 1015.

Death of Custom:

Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

follows that the holders of primary rights – older male farmers – do not have the right to alienate

their land.

110

Indeed, how could an elder male presume the right to sell land to an outsider when

rights in the land also extend to secondary rights holders, spirits from the past, and the yet-

unborn?

If customary law, which includes land law, functioned properly, the village would enjoy

barka, a term and a concept that does not translate easily into English but includes a spiritual

element which connotes general wellbeing and good luck.

111

Barka arises when members of the

village are living in harmony and the various actors in the spirit realm are appeased.

112

So long as

barka is maintained, the rains will fall regularly, crops will produce generously, and all will be

well among the living.

113

To summarize this archetypal description of customary land law, access rights were based

primarily on proving descent from village founders. All male descendants expected ongoing,

predictable access to agricultural land. Decisions about which land an individual could cultivate

were made by elder males. These elder males included heads of family, lineage heads, and chiefs.

Their decisions about access are influenced by the needs of the spirits and of secondary rights

holders including women, later born men, and slaves. The man who farmed the plot of land could

not be said to own it, because he did not have the right to exclude all others from it. Nor did he

have the right to sell it. He could, however, count on primary access to that land during his

lifetime, and could presume that his sons would inherit undivided shares of the same land. Village

110

Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 683; see Hagberg, supra note 60, at 104 (arguing those who attempt to

sell lineage lands in rural Burkina Faso risk sanction from the spirit world).

111

Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 647.

112

Id.

113

To some skeptics, the notion of barka may sound suspiciously close to “harmony.” Some commentators have

critiqued the “harmony” thesis of African village dispute resolution as unrealistic, even naïve. See infra note 345.

However, based on my own fieldwork in rural Nigerien villages, I am confident that harmony and good relations

between and among families is what they say they are trying to accomplish. Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note

8, at 694.

Kelley Syracuse J. Int. L. & Comm. Vol. 47.1.

leaders who allowed this system of interlocking, overlapping, nested rights to deteriorate, risked

the wrath of the spirits and the loss of barka.

Complicating the Picture of Customary Law

If the customary Nigerien land law described in the previous section is an ideal, the

contemporary reality can be far more complicated, partly because outside influences have altered

rural life and land. Although many rural Nigerien communities still rely on lineage heads and

traditional chiefs to determine land rights, the second-half of the 20

century ushered in a

profusion of new actors and institutions eager for a role in establishing the rules of the game and

determining winners and losers.

The Influence of Colonialism

From the European colonial perspective, Niger was a mostly barren hinterland, so the

French did not arrive on the scene until the dawn of the 20

century.

114

France’s approach to

colonialism, sometimes referred to as “direct rule,”

115

assumed that their colonial subjects were

uncivilized but that they could aspire – with sufficient tutelage – to evolve into civilized

Frenchmen.

116

One aspect of civilized life was private ownership and titling of land, which the

French set about establishing in Niger.

117

By the close of the colonial period in 1960, however,

they had made little progress.

118

The fact was that although France claimed to practice direct rule, Niger was mostly an

afterthought and so they limited their investment by settling for what the eminent anthropologist,

114

Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 651 (arguing France occupied Niger late in the colonial period,

mainly to prevent Great Brittan’s colonial expansion in West Africa).

115

Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 652.

116

Id; See Paul D. Ocheje, “In the Public Interest”: Forced Evictions, Land Rights and Human Development in Africa,

51 J. AFR. L. 173, 185 (2007) (referring to France’s “civilizing mission” when it came to urban planning).

117

See Ambe J. Njoh, Urban Planning as a Tool of Power and Social Control in Colonial Africa, 24 PLAN. PERSP.

301, 306 (2009) (arguing it was French colonial practice to decree that the Civil Code would apply in land matters and

that their motivation was to “legitimize their land entitlements” and commodify land)

118

Njoh, supra note 117, at 309; Hagberg, supra note 60, at 101.

Death of Custom:

Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

Sara Berry, has drolly referred to as “hegemony on the cheap.”

119

When it came to land, that

meant introducing the Code Napoléon, including individual ownership and registration of land,

but doing little to enforce it beyond Niamey.

120

It also involved declaring that all “unoccupied”

land, which the French meant all land not subject to individual ownership, belonged to the

state.

121

Once again, however, the vast majority of the population simply ignored that rule and

went on with their lives as before.

122

By the time of Niger’s independence in 1960, the land-related aspects of France’s

civilizing mission had affected rural people in three limited respects. First, it had introduced

the concept, if not the reality, of individual ownership and titling of land.

123

Rural people

became vaguely aware that individual ownership of land was a possibility,

124

even they viewed

that possibility with disinterest or revulsion.

125

Second, the French, who felt the need to

provide housing for colonial officials as well as Nigerien functionaries that worked for the

government, had begun seizing peri-urban farmland and subdividing it into house plots.

126

the time, that activity affected relatively few rural Nigeriens, but it set the stage for the rampant

rural land loss which is happening today.

127

Third, they created the quasi-traditional position of

canton chief, which added powerful new actors to the governance of rural land.

128

Otherwise,

the French impact on land law and land use was minimal.

129

119

SARA BERRY, NO CONDITION IS PERMANENT: THE SOCIAL DYNAMICS OF AGRARIAN CHANGE IN

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA 23-24 (1993); Kelley, supra note 8, at 651.

120

Njoh, supra note 117, at 306.

121

Id.

122

Id.

123

Meyer, supra note 20, at 100.

124

See Kelley, supra note 8, at 682-83, n. 177 (recounting a village elder’s recollection that views about ownership of

land began to evolve starting in 1960s).

125

See id. at 681-82 (quoting a rural farmer saying “nobles do not divide their lands”).

126

See infra notes 208, 210 and accompanying text.

127

See infra text accompanying notes 261-268.

128

See supra text accompanying notes 92-94.

129

Njoh, supra note 117, at 306.

Kelley Syracuse J. Int. L. & Comm. Vol. 47.1.

The Influence of Islam

The rise of Islam in Niger, particularly the recent surge of fundamentalist Islamic

practice, has had more impact on customary land law than the French ever achieved. Trans-

Saharan traders introduced Islam to West Africa in the 8th century.

130

In the mid-14th century,

Mansa Mousa, the ruler of the West African Mali Empire, made the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca

and wowed the world with his vast wealth.

131

But Islam spread slowly through West Africa,

mainly along trade routes.

132

Niger – a territory always off the beaten track – was late to adopt

the religion in its more orthodox forms.

133

Well into the 20

century, most rural Nigeriens professed Islam and adhered strictly to its

Five Pillars

134

but blended Islam with pre-Islamic spirit beliefs. Throughout my many visits to

rural Niger over the past thirty years, pious Islamic friends have adjured me not to whistle, never

to say nice things about a baby’s appearance, never to enter the bush before sunrise, and not to

build a hut on the foundation of recently deceased ancestor’s home, all to avoid agitating the

spirit realm.

135

Although it is true that until recently Islam has been a “stain not always deep”

136

Niger, that situation is changing. In recent decades, Niger’s supple blend of Islam and spirit

worship has come under pressure from conservative Islamic influences emanating from the

130

See Kelley, supra note 8, at 648.

131

Al-Umari, Chapter Ten: The Kingdom of Mali and What Appertains to It, in CORPUS OF EARLY AFRICAN

SOURCES FOR WEST AFRICAN HISTORY 252, 269-72 (N. Levtzion & J.F.P Hopkins, eds. 200

132

Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 648.

133

See id.

134

Thomas Kelley, Exporting Western Law to the Developing World, 39 GEO. WASH. INT. L. REV. 321, 339 (2007)

(arguing most Nigeriens practice the Five Pillars of Islam, which are 1) the declaration of faith that there is only one

God (Allah) and that Muhammad is God’s messenger; 2) the performance of five daily prayers; 3) the giving of alms to

the poor and needy; 4) fasting during the month of Ramadan; 5) making the pilgrimage to Mecca, if one is able).

135

See Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 650, n. 70. In an interesting sign of Niger’s syncretic religious

practices, when villagers feel the need to protect themselves from vengeful spirits, or to provoke the spirits into

harming their rivals, they consult an Islamic marabous for charms and incantations rather than visiting a zima, who was

the traditional interlocutor to that realm. Amadou, supra note 61, at 158; see supra note 80 and accompanying text

(explaining the powers of zimas).

136

JEAN ROUCH, LES SONGHAY , 59 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France 1954) (1954) (“[e]n fait, l’Islam n’est

q’une teinture plus ou moins profounde”).

Death of Custom:

Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

Arabian Peninsula.

137

Young men in particular are increasingly attracted to what Nigeriens refer

to as “reformist” Islam, partly because it is presented by its promoters as a truer, purer, unsullied

version of their religion and, at least according to some commentators, because it condemns

Nigerien customs surrounding bride price payments, which place insuperable financial burdens

on young men and sometimes prevent them from marrying.

138

This gradual but persistent rise of orthodox Islamic beliefs in Niger has led to three

relatively recent changes in customary land law. First, and most simply, it has introduced Islamic

religious leaders as an additional cadre of non-state actors willing to help settle land disputes.

139

By the 1980s, village patriarchs’ and village chiefs’ efforts to mediate land questions in rural

communities routinely involved local Islamic marabouts as part of the process.

140

In some

intractable land disputes, it is now common for one or both parties to seek a ruling by a

regionally prominent Islamic sheik

141

or to a national Islamic association.

142

Second, land-related nostrums in the Koran have led rural residents to a gradual

acknowledgement, if not yet acceptance, of individual ownership and inheritance of land.

143

The

137

See Hagberg, supra note 60, at 115 (arguing orthodox Islam disapproves of land priests, particularly any ritual

addressed to land spirits). Ibrahim, supra note 25, at 9 (arguing Niger is undergoing an “emerging Islamic revival” that

includes the growth of Islamic ascetic practices in daily life”). I have witnessed significant changes in Islamic practice

during my 30 years of visiting rural Nigerien villages. To take only a few examples, village Islamic leaders no longer

permit post-harvest tom-tom dances or traditional games of chance. Village women cover their heads or wear veils

much more frequently than in the 1980s and 90s. Finally, villagers feel constrained when mentioning or invoking the

spirits, though they still come into conversation regularly.

138

See Interview with Young Man Working in Auto Parts Store, Niamey, Republic of Niger (March 4, 2009) (arguing

“Izala” Muslims are popular among young men in Niamey because they condemn bride wealth payment).

139

See Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 668 (describing a land-related dispute in a rural village where the

local marabout helped mediate).

140

Id.

141

See Kelley, Exporting Western Law, supra note 134, at 324-327 (describing an incident where disputing parties

brought the matter to a prominent Islamic figure).

142

See generally, Meyer, supra note 20, at 48 (arguing various Islamic actors, including the Islamic Association of

Niger, sometimes “act in place of the state” in resolving land disputes). See Interview with Village Chief and Group of

Elders, Saabu Dey, Republic of Niger (December 18, 2003) (recounting an instance wher parties to a land dispute

swore oaths before officials of the Associatin Islamique du Niger); Interview with President of the Islamic Association,

Cadis, and Chef de Canton’s Secretary, Say, Republic of Niger (February 25, 2004) (describing the procedure when

disputants swear before the religious leaders from the Association Islamique du Niger).

143

See Ali Abd Al-Kader, Land Property and Land Tenure in Islam, 5 ISLAMIC Quarterly 4, 5 (1959) (noting that

both the Koran and the actions of the early Muslim state show “an express emphasis and encouragement of land

ownership”).

Kelley Syracuse J. Int. L. & Comm. Vol. 47.1.

Koran calls for male descendants to share equally in land and female descendants to receive half-

shares.

144

Thus far, no one I have encountered in rural Niger has suggested abandoning the

customary law that permits only men to inherit land; however, Islamic law, perhaps in

combination with the French colonial legacy, has nudged rural people closer to the view that

land is something to be owned and inherited individually without the mediating influence of

traditional leaders.

145

Finally, the spirits, including the original gangi bi land spirits and the spirits of ancestors,

today play a diminishing role in determining land use and outcomes. It is not that rural people

believe there are no spirits; rather they believe that Islam is ascendant and that the spirits

therefore have less power than they once did.

146

The Influence of Economic Liberalization

Notions about individual ownership of land, registration of land rights, and the

possibility of land sales, were pushed upon rural Nigeriens with much more force starting the

late 1980s and 1990s with the rise of global liberalization.

147

In Niger’s case, the liberal agenda included, among other features, the passage of a

comprehensive land reform law known as the Rural Code and overall government

decentralization, both of which have affected land rights and laid the groundwork for the

transformation of peri-urban land from communal custom to individual ownership.

148

The story of liberalization in Africa is long, complicated, and in some respects tragic,

149

but a summary version must suffice here. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the Soviet

144

See Mirath, ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ISLAM (P. Bearman et al. eds., 2d ed. 2005).

145

See Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 683 (arguing rural farmers’ understanding of the land the cultivate

is “unsettled” and combines communal tenure with French and Islamic notions of ownership and inheritance).

146

See id. at 649 (arguing rural Nigerien people feel free to blend Islam with spirit worship so long as the Muslim God

is supreme); Interview with Former Resident of Goudel (April 30, 2018), supra note 38 (arguing the spirits do not like

modernity and are losing power).

147

Kelley, Unintended Consequences, supra note 9, at 1019-20.

148

Kelley, supra note 9, at 1019-20.

149

Id. at 1021 and n. 131; infra notes 164-173 and accompanying text; Kelley, supra note 9 at 1029.

Death of Custom:

Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

Union collapsed, the United States became, at least temporarily, the world’s only superpower.

150

If poor countries in the Global South wanted help paying their bills, they could no longer count

on playing the U.S. and the Soviet Union off of one another.

151

They would have to agree to

economic and political reforms dictated by the U.S., its allies, and the international financial

institutions they controlled.

152

Those policies collectively became known as the Washington

Consensus.

153

The Consensus was geared toward shrinking and democratizing the state and allowing

the free hand of the market to work its magic.

154

Governments across Africa, if they wished to

benefit from the Global North’s economic largess, were compelled to slash civil service rolls,

eliminate regulations, privatize state-owned industries, roll back subsidies, and commit to free

and fair elections and democratic governance.

155

Another key tenet of the Washington

Consensus was the need to privatize, title and register land.

156

Based on the writings of the

Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, the assumption was that poor countries such as Niger

remain poor because its citizens lack secure rights in their own land.

157

The Nigerien farmer

with no formal deed to the land he tills cannot pledge it as collateral to buy fertilizer or a tractor

and thereby intensify his investment.

158

As a result, he sits on an under-exploited pile of “dead

150

See generally, Kelley, supra note 9, at 1029 (arguing the introduction of Western land laws and anti-slavery laws to

Niger was causing Niger’s customary slaves to lost access to agricultural land).

151

See Thomas Kelley, Beyond the Washington Consensus and New Institutionalism: What is the Future of Law and

Development?, N.C. J. OF INT. L. AND COMM. REG. 539, 542 (arguing after the fall of the Berlin Wall Western

nations interpreted their Cold War victory as proof of the value of unregulated free markets).

152

See Kelley, supra note 9, at 1001 (arguing after the fall of the Berlin wall, African countries could no longer play

“the Western and Eastern blocs off of one another").

153

Kelley, supra note 150, at 542; Kelley, Exporting Western Law, supra note 134, at 328.

154

Kelley, supra note 150, at 542.

155

See Kelley, supra note 134, at 327-28.

156

Kelley, supra note 9, at 1002.

157

Id.; see Tor A. Benjaminsen et al., Formalization of Land Rights: Some Empirical Evidence from Mali, Niger and

South Africa, 26 LAND USE POL’Y 28, 29 (2008) (arguing De Soto’s book The Mystery of Capital gave direction to

an entire new movement in law and development); see generally, HERNANDO DE SOTO, THE MYSTERY OF

CAPITAL, WHY CAPITALISM TRIUMPHS IN THE WEST AND FAILS EVERYWHERE ELSE (2000).

158

Kelley, Unintended Consequences, supra note 9, at 1002.

Kelley Syracuse J. Int. L. & Comm. Vol. 47.1.

capital” and remains mired in poverty.

159

The key to unlocking prosperity in poor countries,

therefore, was the reform and formalization of land rights,

160

which would allow property

owners to “revive their ‘dead’ capital and generate surplus value from their assets.”

161

To summarize in one sentence the results of the Consensus economic policies –

including land titling – they inflicted significant pain and suffering on poor people in the Global

South while producing few of the advertised economic benefits.

162

Nevertheless,

Niger was an early and enthusiastic adopter Consensus policies, including land titling.

163

In 1993, in keeping with the Consensus and just as the country was embarking on its first

experiment with democratically elected government, it adopted a comprehensive new set of land

laws, referred to as the Rural Code,

164

aimed at bringing order and consistency to what aid experts

and central government officials viewed as the country’s confusing jumble of land customs and

practices.

165

It was an enormously ambitious scheme that can only be summarized here. It

envisaged the creation of a series of land commissions at various levels of government and

procedures by which those who control land could obtain and register individual title to it.

166

theory, the Rural Code and its administrative processes took a culturally sensitive approach to land

reform in that it claimed that communal rights and secondary rights – the sort of customary land

rights described in Part III.A., above – were eligible for registration and protection.

167

However, as

the Rural Code began to roll out, it became abundantly clear that government agents were intent on

159

DE SOTO, supra note 157, at 163.

160

See generally Benjaminsen et al., supra note 157, at 29.

161

Kelley, Unintended Consequences, supra note 9, at 1002.

162

See Kelley, Exporting Western Law, supra note 134, at 328-29 (arguing the track record of Washington

consensus reforms “has been poor”); Kelley, Unintended Consequences, supra note 9, at 1002-3 (arguing studies

of privatization find that “few of the predicted economic benefits actually materialized”).

163

See Kelley, Unintended Consequences, supra note 9, at 1021 (arguing Niger launched a “full scale land reform

effort” that aimed to “convert Niger from customary land tenure to a Western system of freehold ownership and

titling”).

164

Code rural [C. Rural.] [Rural Code] art. 93-115 (Fr.).

165

Kelley, supra note 9, at 1022.

166

See Meyer, supra note 20, at 249-50.

167

See Kelley, supra note 9, at 1021.

Death of Custom:

Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

registering land in the names of individuals, not groups, as part of an overall effort to comply with

Consensus dictates and “modernize” Niger’s land laws.

168

Several excellent articles and books have been written about Niger’s attempts at land law

reform.

169

The short version is that in more than two decades, the reforms have had limited

effect.

170

Peasant farmers find the process of land registration cumbersome and expensive, and

they still generally prefer to deal directly with traditional chiefs.

171

The chiefs, who receive

prestige and money by recognizing land claims and conciliating land disputes, encourage the view

that nothing has changed, that other local political actors such as mayors and councilors are

impotent, and that the Rural Code’s land commissions are a waste of time.

172

Even where farmers

are motivated to formally register their lands – and some are, particularly where there are disputes

over access or the threat of state expropriation – the government often lacks resources and

personnel to maintain the necessary registers.

173

168

Id.; Chimhowu & Woodhouse, supra note 104, at 347 (arguing land registration schemes in Africa claim to register

group rights but usually aim for individualized ownership “formalized in a written title to physically-demarcated

land”); see also Lorenzo Cotula et. al., Land Tenure and Administration in Africa: Lessons of Experience and

Emerging Issues 13 (2004) (arguing Niger’s Rural Code purports to respect customary rights but places the new land

system firmly under the control of non-customary actors); UBINK, supra note 57, at 222 (arguing titling schemes in the

African context often ignore secondary rights holders).

169

See e.g., CHRISTIAN LUND, LAW, POWER, AND POLITICS IN NIGER: LAND STRUGGLES AND THE RURAL CODE IN

NIGER (1998).

170

Bron-Saidatou, supra note 26, at 25 (arguing less than 3% of parcels of eligible land have been registered in

Niger).

171

Cotula et al., supra note 168, at 12; Andrew R. Falk, Ahead of the Curve: Promoting Land Tenure Security in Sub-

Saharan Africa To Protect the Environment, SEATTLE J. FOR SOC. JUST. 1, 35 (2016) (arguing titling schemes in sub-

Saharan Africa are often “arduous and expensive”); see Meyer, supra note 20, at 251.

172

MEYER, supra note 20, at 252 (arguing canton chiefs use their customary authority to block or authorize land

transactions even though they have not formal authority under the Rural Code).

173

See Cotula et al., supra note 168, at 5 (arguing implementation of Niger’s Rural Code has been slow due to lack of

resources).

Kelley Syracuse J. Int. L. & Comm. Vol. 47.1.

The Influence of Government Decentralization

As Niger’s government began implementing the Rural Code the early 1990s, it

simultaneously dove into government decentralization, which is another aspect of the standard

consensus liberalization package.

174

Lawmakers hoped these two reforms would mesh

seamlessly and that the new procedures for registering rural land would be carried out by

grassroots officials, including locally elected councilors and mayors whose positions were

created by the new decentralization legislation.

175

That was not how things turned out.

176

The theory behind decentralization was that if responsibility for revenue collection and

service delivery were pushed down from the central government to locally elected officials,

there would be greater accountability and efficiency.

177

Decisions on whether to invest in

road maintenance or the construction of markets would be made at the local level and local

people would hold their officials – local councilors and mayors whose offices had been

created by the decentralization legislation

– accountable for results.

178

If local leaders spent

public money unwisely or irresponsibly, or more to the point, if tax revenues disappeared as a

result of corruption, local voters would know it and would elect new local representatives.

179

Likewise, decisions about land ownership and registration, whether in rural or urban areas,

would be most accurately and efficiently carried out by local governments and local

174

MEYER, supra note 20, at 110 (describing decentralization as one of the “watchwords” of democratization in

Niger).

175

See Cotula et al., supra note 168, at 12 (arguing countries in sub-Saharan Africa attempted to decentralize

control over land within the broader context of political decentralization).

176

See infra notes 183-186 and accompanying text; NJOH, supra note 27, at 549 (arguing that decentralization in

Niger never really materialized).

177

See KORLING, supra note 20, at 105 (arguing that aid agencies promoted decentralization as bringing

governmental administration closer to the people and increased accountability, transparency, and efficiency, but that

it just made local level governance more complex).

178

Id. at 113 (a goal of decentralization was that citizens would see where their money was going, thereby

legitimizing taxation).

179

See id. at 106 (arguing decentralization in Niger was supposed to create accountability, transparency, and

efficiency). Interview with Former Mayor of Niamey Commune 5, Niamey, Republic of Niger (May 2, 2018)

(arguing “it’s harder to see corruption when it’s farther away?).

Death of Custom:

Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

officials.

180

After all, they would be closest to the facts on the ground and they would be

accountable to local land users.

181

More than twenty years in, most observers judge decentralization to be a failure both in

rural areas and in Niamey.

182

One problem was that, the scheme gave local governments major

responsibility for service delivery – including responsibility for implementing the Rural Code’s

new land registration procedures – but virtually no resources with which to achieve those

tasks.

183

Also, central government actors who had long enjoyed unquestioned authority were

reluctant to surrender their prerogatives, including the rent seeking opportunities that go along

with controlling finances, so they simply delayed and obfuscated when it came to devolving

power to lower levels of government.

184

In the end, all that decentralization accomplished was to add a low-level,

comparatively powerless set of government actors to an already crowded and chaotic

institutional matrix.

185

Before decentralization, a jumble of customary chiefs, Islamic

religious leaders, and representatives of the central government vied with one another for

legitimacy and power in both rural and urban areas.

186

Decentralization laws added local

councilors and mayors to the mix, a group that brought no historical legitimacy and no

180

See Interview with Former Mayor of Niamey Commune 5, Niamey, Republic of Niger (May 2, 2018). Former

Mayor of Niamey Commune 5, supra note 180 (arguing land conversions were better managed by local commune

governments, as opposed to the CUN government, because they were more accountable to local residents).

181

Interview with Former Mayor of Niamey Commune 5 (May 2, 2018).

182

Korling, supra note 20, at 106-107 (arguing that in many areas decentralization simply made things more

complicated by adding to the already confused jumble of political actors involved in land and the delivery of

government services).

183

Id. at 107-108; Cotula et al., supra note 168, at 5. Njoh, supra note 27, at 540.

184

Korling, supra note 20, at 110 (arguing the subdivision of land was a “valuable resource” and “source of illicit

enrichment” for governmental actors, and that the central government officials won the struggle against local

governments).

185

Id. at 106; see Meyer, supra note 20, at 24-27, 30-34 (arguing numerous Nigerien institutions vie with one

another for authority over land transactions).

186

See Meyer, supra note 20, at 24-27; 30-34.

Kelley Syracuse J. Int. L. & Comm. Vol. 47.1.

additional resources with which to entice adherents.

187

They ended up being easily out-

competed by central government authorities, who never removed their fingers from the purse

strings, and by traditional chiefs, who either isolated them by convincing rural people to

ignore them, or coopted them by having their own relatives run for local office.

188

The failure of decentralization has contributed to an atmosphere of “general

dysfunction”

189

when it comes to land registration in rural areas.

190

Because there are no

resources to create and maintain cadastral systems at the lower levels of government, and

because there is constant competition from other actors, precious few parcels of rural land

are actually being registered in rural areas.

191

In spite of these institutional failures, the Rural Code (including its plans for titling

and registration of land) and government decentralization have in combination affected

land and land use in peri-urban areas in two respects. First, they have helped spread the

word about the concept of individual ownership and registration of land. Although land

ownership is not an entirely new concept, having been introduced to rural communities by

the French and by the rise of “reformist” Islam, until recently it has been more of a rumor

than a reality.

192

187

Id. at 224, 251 (arguing the institutions of the state lack legitimacy in land matters, that people still turn to chiefs

instead of local officials); Bron-Saidatou, supra note 26, at 20 (arguing commune level governments in peri-urban

areas lack the power the money to control land matters).

188

Korling, supra note 20, at 106, 119-120.

189

Bron-Saidatou, supra note 26, at 21

190

Id. at 24.

191

Id. at 24 (estimating that 3% of rural land in Niger has been registered under the Rural Code).

192

See, Kelley, supra note 9.

Death of Custom:

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IV.

The Death of Customary Law in Peri-Urban Niamey

Peri-urban development around African cities tends to follow major paved roads that lead

to the countryside, and eventually link to other major cities and towns.

193

Since 1986, for more

than 30 years, I have regularly traveled on Niamey’s Filingue Road, which heads east-northeast

out of the capital toward the town of Filingue.

194

Therefore, I have had a consistent reference

point by which to track Niamey’s growth. As late as the mid-2000s, the Filingue Road had one

gas station across from the Wadata Market, in what was the edge of the city. Drivers, including

me, often filled up there before leaving town and venturing into the bush. There was sporadic

development along the road beyond the gas station, but few permanent structures. As one exited

the city, the landscape quickly turned to millet fields and tree nurseries. The first village, Saga

Gourou, approximately 10 kilometers from the Wadata gas station, looked and felt as if it

belonged to a different world, a rural world.

When I drove out of Niamey along the Filingue Road in 2018, I counted eleven gas

stations beyond my old fill-up spot.

195

The road was lined with commercial buildings,

compounds, and, behind that commercial strip, residential neighborhoods as far as the eye could

193

See Janine M Ubink, Courts and Peri-Urban Practice – Customary Land Law in Ghana, U. GHANA L. J. 25

(2002-2004) (arguing development of peri-urban areas in Ghana follows main roads because that is where

electricity is most commonly available).

194

I base my description of the Filingue Road, officially named RN 25, on decades of observation. I served as a

Peace Corps volunteer in Niger from 1986 to 1988 and was posted in a village approximately 50 kilometers east-

northeast of Niamey in the general direction of the town of Filingue. I regularly rode a motorcycle to and from

Niamey along that route. In late 1990s, when I began performing ethnographic legal research in the same zone, I

regularly traveled the Filingue Road in public transportation. Still later, when I had a Fulbright Scholarship in

Niger from 2003-2004, I drove a private vehicle out the Filingue Road several times each week to perform

fieldwork. I have continued to visit that zone regularly, most recently in May, 2018.

195

See Interview with Hamdallaye Canton Chief, supra note 17 (describing development along the Filingue

Road between Niamey and Hamdallaye).

Kelley Syracuse J. Int. L. & Comm. Vol. 47.1.

see. The rampant development has engulfed the village of Saga Gourou. Clearly, something

dramatic is happening to land around Niamey.

196

History of Land in Niamey and Environs

The city of Niamey was, to a large extent, a colonial creation.

197

Before the French

arrived at the turn of the 20

century, there were several villages along the banks of the Niger

River, in the area of present-day Niamey, but no significant cities or towns.

198

During the

early years of their colonial project in Niger, the French vacillated between Zinder and

Niamey as their center of activity.

199

But Niamey had attractive views of the Niger River and

an airy plateau where the colonial overlords could build their offices and residences. In 1926,

the French established a permanent capital there.

200

The airy plateau favored by the French was located between two villages that became

important actors in the story of Niamey’s peri-urban land transformation. To the west, and

somewhat upriver, was the village of Goudel.

201

To the east, and somewhat downriver, was

the village of Gamkallay.

202

Historically, their fields were divided by a watercourse and gully

that now bisects Niamey.

203

Today, both former villages are considered neighborhoods of the

capital city.

204

196

NB: Much of this description, including the presence of the eleven gas stations beyond Wadata, can be verified

on Google Maps. The first village, Saga Gorou, is not identified by name but you can see the settlement on the

satellite version.

197

Meyer, supra note 20, at 93.

198

See id. (arguing in pre-colonial days, present-day Niamey was away from major trade routes and a “zone of

refuge” for diverse peoples).

199

NJOH, supra note 27, at 546. Meyer, supra note 20, at 99 (arguing the city of Zinder, located in eastern Niger,

was a city of longstanding political and economic importance.

200

MEYER, supra note 20, at 99.

201

Id. at 94.

202

Id.

203

See id.at 96 (arguing Gamkalle and Goudel originally controlled the land that later became Niamey and that

the dividing line between them was the ravine of Gunti Yena, a stream that enters the Niger River).

204

Based on personal knowledge, Gamkalle and Goudel are not the only villages incorporated into Niamey over

the decades. For example, Gaway, a pre-colonial fishing settlement on the banks of the Niger River, was displaced

during the 1970s to make room for the present-day Hotel Gawaye. The government moved Gaway’s residents

Death of Custom:

Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

The French set about transforming land law in their new colony, but, as discussed in Part

III, they made little progress in rural areas.

205

The vast majority of Niger’s people simply

ignored the putative changes in land law and went on with their lives as before.

206

But this was less the case in and around Niamey. By the 1950s, the colonial regime was

beginning to carve up rural land on the city’s outskirts – largely in what had been the

agricultural fields of Goudel and Gamkale – to produce subdivided residential parcels, mostly

for civil servants and veterans who had regular salaries.

207

Because the French did not

recognize customary claims, they simply requisitioned what they considered empty land and

dedicated it to their preferred uses.

208

The colonists’ subdivision of land around Niamey for residential purposes was slow and

steady until the late 1950s,

209

when it began to accelerate as a result of economic growth, high

birth rates, and two great droughts in 1972-73 and 1983-84.

210

Rural people were being

pushed by crisis but also pulled by opportunity as pre- and post-Independence governments

focused their limited resources on developing schools, health care facilities, and other

infrastructure in cities.

211

The rapid growth in urban population outstripped the government’s

across the Niger River to a newly settled area called Haro Banda and compensated them by granting them multiple

subdivided house plots. Another village, Saga, had much of its territory expropriated by Niger’s government to

build Diori Hamani Airport on what was then the outskirts of the capital. Today, Niamey has grown around and

beyond the airport and Saga is considered a suburban neighborhood.

205

See supra notes 120-122 and accompanying text.

206

Id.

207

MEYER, supra note 20, at 105; see Korling, supra note 20, at 73 (arguing that since the colonial period urban

planning in Niamey has focused on subdivision of land, but that the planning has always fallen behind actual

expansion).

208

Meyer, supra note 20, at 3.

209

Motcho, supra note 48, at 2 (describing Niamey’s rapid population growth during the late colonial and early

independence periods and rising demand for parcels of land).

210

Meyer, supra note 20, at 109.

211

Ocheje, supra note 116, at 187.

Kelley Syracuse J. Int. L. & Comm. Vol. 47.1.

ability to convert land from farms to house plots,

212

and the result was the appearance of

informal, mostly unplanned neighborhoods around Niamey’s periphery.

213

When the French colonialists departed in 1960 and the post-independence

government took control, little changed, at least in the realm of law.

214

The newly

independent country declared that the French Civil Code would continue to be the law of the

land,

215

and the vast majority of Niger’s citizens continued to ignore that formal law, just as

they had under the French.

216

In Niamey, however, the post-independence government held

more sway than in rural areas and was able, at least to a certain extent, to continue the

colonial land practices and policies.

217

Particularly during the reign of Sayni Kountche, a

military dictator who ruled from 1974-1987, the Nigerien state carried on with expropriating

significant tracts of land on the periphery of the city, all by military decree, and dedicating it

to providing housing for the city’s growing population.

218

As was true during colonialism,

much of the land was taken from farmers from the villages of Gamkale and Goudel.

212

Korling, supra note 20, at 73.

213

Meyer, supra note 20, at 107 (arguing some of the informal neighborhoods were later formalized while others

were not).

214

Njoh, supra note 27, at 547, 549; Meyer, supra note 20, at 107.

215

Njoh, supra note 27, at 550

216

Njoh, supra note 27 (Niger’s post-independence governments periodically issued decrees and passed laws

attempting to reform land practice. For example, in the 1970s, the military regime of President Sayni Kountche

decreed a new policy of mise en valeur: the notion that henceforth all rural land would “belong” to those who were

farming it); Kelley, supra note 8, Squeezing Parakeets Into Pigeon Holes: The Effect of Globalization and State

Legal Reform in Niger on Indigenous Zarma Law, at 685. Many said that in fact this policy was Kountche’s attempt

to remove or at least weaken chiefs’ power of land tenure matters; Kelley, supra note 8, Squeezing Parakeets Into

Pigeon Holes: The Effect of Globalization and State Legal Reform in Niger on Indigenous Zarma Law, at 685. In

the end, it really did not matter, since resilient rural Nigeriens largely ignored that policy too..

217

Meyer, supra note 20, at 107.

218

See supra note 208 (arguing Niger’s post-independence governments seized his family’s lands without

compensation and dedicated them to Niamey’s Green Belt); Kelley, supra note 8, at 138 (arguing the Kountche

regime also continued the expansion of the colonialist’s Green Belt).

Death of Custom:

Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

Decentralization Struggles Lead to Chaos in Urban and

Peri-Urban Land Management

Fundamental changes in land law, changes that have profoundly affected the lives and

livelihoods of people living in peri-urban zones, did not accelerate until the 1990s, the era of

economic liberalization, democratization, and government decentralization described in Part

III, above. Niger, whether by choice or compulsion, fully implemented Washington

Consensus reforms including land law reform and government decentralization.

While those

policies had comparatively little impact in isolated rural areas,

219

they began to alter peoples’

lives in peri- urban zones around the capital.

The land transformation in and around Niamey began in earnest as an indirect result of

government decentralization. In 2002, Niamey’s central government, the Urban Community of

Niamey (“CUN”) was divided into five separate local governments, known as communes, each

with significant responsibility for providing municipal services.

220

Importantly, each of the

urban communes had the authority to subdivide and sell land on its periphery.

221

The

communes quickly realized that the central government was going to do little to help pay for

219

Njoh, supra note 27 (Niger’s post-independence governments periodically issued decrees and passed laws

attempting to reform land practice. For example, in the 1970s, the military regime of President Sayni Kountche

decreed a new policy of mise en valeur: the notion that henceforth all rural land would “belong” to those who were

farming it); Kelley, supra note 8, Squeezing Parakeets Into Pigeon Holes: The Effect of Globalization and State

Legal Reform in Niger on Indigenous Zarma Law, at 685. Many said that in fact this policy was Kountche’s attempt

to remove or at least weaken chiefs’ power of land tenure matters; Kelley, supra note 8, Squeezing Parakeets Into

Pigeon Holes: The Effect of Globalization and State Legal Reform in Niger on Indigenous Zarma Law, at 685. In

the end, it really did not matter, since resilient rural Nigeriens largely ignored that policy too.; Meyer, supra note 20,

at 107.

220

Meyer, supra note 20, at 227.

221

Meyer, supra note 20, at 111.

Kelley Syracuse J. Int. L. & Comm. Vol. 47.1.

governmental services,

222

and that converting peri-urban land from farms to house plots was a

source of desperately needed revenue.

223

The communes quickly realized that the central government was going to do little to

help pay for governmental services,

224

and that converting peri-urban land from farms to house

plots was a source of desperately-needed revenue.

225

Not incidentally, subdividing and selling

land also created rent-seeking opportunities for commune officials, of which they took full

advantage.

226

With these dynamics at play, the urban communes enthusiastically dove into the

business of converting farmland around the city into subdivided house plots.

227

During this period, however, there was growing tension between Niamey’s newly

empowered commune governments and the CUN. From the CUN’s perspective, the

communes squabbled with one another, refused to collaborate, and prevented the CUN from

playing its rightful role as coordinator.

228

From the communes’ perspective, the CUN simply

222

Kelley, supra note 8, at 682; LOERENZO COTULA, ET. AL., LAND TENURE AND ADMINISTRATION IN

AFRICA: LESSONS OFEXPERIENCE AND EMERGING ISSUES 13 (2004) (arguing Niger’s Rural Code

purports to respect customary rights but places the new land system firmly under the control of non-customary

actors); Ubink, Tenure Security, supra note 57, at 222 (arguing titling schemes in the African context often ignore

secondary rights holders); Chimhowu & Woodhouse, supra note 104, at 347 (arguing land registration schemes in

Africa claim to register group rights but usually aim for individualized ownership “formalized in a written title to

physically-demarcated land”); Njoh, supra note 27, at 540 (arguing the decentralization that was supposed to

accompany the Rural Code “never really materialized”); Meyer, supra note 20, at 224, 251 (arguing the institutions

of the state lack legitimacy in land matters, that people still turn to chiefs instead of local officials); Bron-Saidatou,

supra note 26, at 20 (arguing commune level governments in peri-urban areas lack the power the money to control

land matters)

223

See Interview with Former Mayor of Commune 5 of Niamey, Niamey, Republic of Niger (May 2, 2018) (arguing

the communes produced revenues from developing peri-urban land and spent it on service provision); Meyer, supra

note 20, at 227; Korling, supra note 20, at 109 (arguing zoning power appeared to the commune governments as a

“golden opportunity” to produce revenue).

224

See Korling, supra note 20, at 108 (arguing commune governments were given much responsibility for service

delivery but few means to raise funds).

225

Meyer, supra note 20, at 227 (arguing that subdividing land provided revenues to commune-level governments).

226

See Korling, supra note 20, at 81 (arguing that the process of subdividing land is complicated and corrupt);

Issaka, supra note 1 (arguing that in the 1990s the communes were practically the only ones subdividing land around

Niamey and that corruption had been at the heart of the system).

227

Meyer, supra note 20, at 233.

228

Id. at 227

Death of Custom:

Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

did not want to relinquish its centralized power.

229

By 2011 the struggle between Niamey’s

communes and the CUN was over and, for political reasons beyond the scope of this article,

230

the CUN had reasserted control of city government, including the development of peri-urban

land.

231

The CUN’s inability to handle the volume of land transactions and the entry of private

developers to the market conjunctively catalyzed chaos in peri-urban land development.

232

Enter the Private Developers

Before the CUN mayor’s office could bring order to peri-urban land development, it

was overtaken by the arrival of private land developers in the market.

233

Legal changes in the

late 1990s authorized private development,

234

but its influence was not felt until the mid-

2000s when a governmental decree definitively removed the state’s monopoly and made it

possible for anyone possessing peri-urban land to subdivide and sell it.

235

The idea was to

unburden the government from constantly having to search for resources to carry out

necessary improvements for the process of converting agricultural land to house plots: the

provision of roads, public buildings, water, electricity, and other infrastructure.

236

The effect,

however, was to permit private actors, particularly those with working capital, to suddenly and

entirely take over land development on the edge of the city.

237

There has been a boom in the

229

Interview with Former Mayor of Niamey Commune 5 (May 2, 2018), supra note 180.

230

In brief, Niger experienced a coup d’état in 2010 and the military government preferred to govern the city by

naming its own top officials. See Meyer supra note 20, at 228.

231

Id. at 113, 22

232

Id. at 228 (arguing the CUN mayor’s office attempted to centralize all land-related record-keeping, resulting in

boxes of disorganized records piled high in the corridors, complete lack of file verification, and some parcels being

sold multiple times).

233

Id. at 229.

234

Issaka, supra note 1 (arguing many private developers entered the Niamey land market after legal reforms in

1997); Meyer, supra note 20, at 118.

235

Meyer, supra note 20, at 227, 229 (arguing private developers were not fully able to participate in development

of peri-urban land until a government decree in 2000).

236

Id. at 229.

237

Id. at 235, 238.

Kelley Syracuse J. Int. L. & Comm. Vol. 47.1.

development of peri-urban land since 2010,

238

and every new subdivision around Niamey has

been undertaken by private developers.

239

Most of the leading private actors have been individuals who, through personal

contacts and prior experience, know how to navigate the tortuous bureaucratic process

involved in converting farmland into suburbs.

240

Some acquired their knowledge by

working on the inside of the state bureaucracy and their core expertise is keeping up on the

constant modifications to the arcane procedural requirements.

241

Others have become

powerful private actors because of family ties to chiefs in the peri-urban zones.

242

They use

their connections to identify potential sellers of land and to negotiate with lineage heads.

243

The former group of intermediaries are familiar with the corridors of power and the constant

flux in the rules, while the latter keep tabs on who owns which lands and who might be

convinced to sell.

244

The most effective of the middlemen combine both competencies.

245

They propose their service directly to customary owners, offering the enticing possibility of

selling their land without having to engage directly with the distasteful, even dreaded,

government bureaucracy; and often offering better terms than those offered by commune-

level mayors’ offices (before municipal government was re- centralized) or the CUN (before

it was squeezed out of the game).

246

The entrance of private developers into peri-urban land markets have led to the

238

Id. at 242.

239

Issaka, supra note 1 (arguing private developers have become more powerful actors than government); Meyer,

supra note 20, at 229.

240

See Meyer, supra note 20, at 236.

241

Id.

242

Id.

243

Id.

244

Id.

245

See Meyer, supra note 20, at 239.

246

Id. at 237.

Death of Custom:

Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

emergence of symbiotic, mafia-like networks between the private actors and government

officials.

247

The developers, many of whom have grown vastly wealthy, grease the necessary

palms in the state bureaucracy to ensure their development plans are approved,

248

whether or

not those plans comply with state requirements, or the best practices for infrastructure, public

space, and the like.

249

In recent years, the developers’ corrupt influence is rumored to go even

deeper and higher.

250

Some have become so wealthy that they are able to pour vast amounts

of money into electoral campaigns to ensure the election of officials who are sympathetic to

their projects.

251

Once this is accomplished and their friends are in office, the tortuous

governmental regulatory and permitting processes become crystal clear and streamlined for

the politicians’ patron but remains tortuous and opaque for the patron’s competitors.

252

It is

common knowledge in Niamey that these relationships reach the highest levels of

government, which means no bureaucrat, at any level of the state apparatus, can safely

impede the private developers’ plans – whether for corrupt or legitimate public safety

reasons.

253

247

See id. at 241.

248

See Korling, supra note 20, at 80, 91 (arguing the sale of peri-urban house plots is the source of corrupt

practices, that Niamey city hall is a “locus of negotiations and access,” and that government officials are typically

bribed by offering them plots in the subdivisions they authorize); Interview with Former Niamey Mayor of

Commune 5 (insert interview source, and location) (May 2, 2019), supra note 180 (arguing “[t]he only way to

move a [housing] project forward is to engage in corruption” by paying ministry officials).

249

See Korling, supra note 20, at 90; Interview with Former Mayor of Niamey Commune 5 (insert interview

source, and location) (May 2, 2019), supra note 180.

250

See Interview with Former Mayor of Niamey Commune 5 (insert interview source, and location) (May 2, 2018),

supra note 180 (arguing the land system around Niamey is “full of corruption,” that faulty development plans are

routinely approved by corrupt CUN officials, and that the office of Niger’s president overrules decisions by lower

level government offices that might block development plans).

251

Meyer, supra note 20, at 241.

252

Id.

253

See id. at 244-245, 259; see generally Interview with Former Mayor of Niamey Commune 5 (insert interview

source, and location) (May 2, 2019), supra note 180 (arguing his private business was suffering because those in

political power were steering business away from him).

Kelley Syracuse J. Int. L. & Comm. Vol. 47.1.

As in rural areas,

254

in peri-urban zones there is an ongoing struggle over who has

formal authority to authorize the transition from farmland to suburban house plots.

255

Chiefs

in peri- urban zones vie with formal CUN officials, who in turn vie with various central

government ministers and their underlings whose portfolios touch on land development.

256

But since the entrance of wealthy, politically connected private developers onto the scene, the

contest for formal authority matters less

257

because the private actors simply push aside the

competing organs of the state and carry out their development plans in whatever way will

maximize their profits.

258

The state has become one actor among many, and in most instances

it not the most powerful one.

259

The result, discussed in more detail in Part V., below, is that

it has become “impossible to manage the peri-urban land for the good of all, especially for the

lowest level of society.”

260

D. The Current Situation

Today, land in the vicinity of Niamey is coveted and the market is frenzied.

261

Although

the large private developers described above are dominant players and reap the greatest rewards,

it seems that everyone with capital to invest is jostling to get into the game.

262

Business people

254

Meyer, supra note 20, at 225.

255

Meyer supra note 20, at 225.

256

Id. at 211, 225, 256 (arguing the Ministries of Environment, Urbanism, Cadaster, and Education all have

claims to authorize peri-urban land transactions, but that Urbanism is the most powerful so private developer

with clout skip the other ministries and go straight to Urbanism).

257

See Issaka, supra note 1 (arguing the developers and their highly placed patrons in central government succeeded

in pushing the lower level commune governments out of the way even though they were supposed to have authority

over subdividing land); Meyer, supra note 20, at 225.

258

Meyer, supra note 20, at 224; Interview with A Highly Placed Official in Niger’s Ministry of Environment and

of Durable Development, Niamey, Republic of Niger (May 11, 2018) (arguing the rise of private developers means

no one is taking account of the public interest and it is now all about generating profit).

259

Meyer, supra note 20, at 225.

260

Id.

261

See Issaka, supra note 1 (employing the French term “combat foncier” meaning “land combat” to describe

the real estate market in peri-urban areas around Niamey).

262

See Interview with Retired Office Worker, Niamey, Republic of Niger (insert interview source, and location)

(April 28, 2018) (describing his purchases of various empty house lots in towns near Niamey); see also Interview

Death of Custom:

Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

who have no background in land development and whose main activities focus on general

commerce or transportation, are buying up empty lots in the fast-spreading peri-urban

neighborhoods with an eye toward flipping them or developing them.

263

Those with sufficient

means purchase the lots in large quantities,

264

often in cahoots with government officials with

whom they split the profits when prices rise.

265

While others purchase large tracts of agricultural

land located far from the city;

266

and some plan to subdivide the land quickly and sell to smaller-

scale speculators.

267

Others intend to sit on the distant land until the fast-expanding city

approaches their holdings and pushes the value upward.

268

Poor urban Nigeriens are nowhere to be seen in this scramble for peri-urban land. The

government, with the support and advice of aid agencies, has begun in recent years entering into

public-private partnerships to establish new logement social (“social” or “affordable” housing) in

with Two Real Estate Developers, Niamey, Republic of Niger (insert interview source, and location) (April 30,

2018) (discussing where one developer was a former lawyer and the other was until recently a “documentary

filmmaker” and still had that profession on his business card).

263

See Interview with El Hadji Merchant, Niamey, Republic of Niger (insert interview source, and location) (May

4, 2018) (describing a merchant with no development experience revealing his plans for developing recently

purchased peri-urban land); Interview with a Businessman, Niamey, Republic of Niger (insert interview source, and

location) (May 4, 2018) (describing an uneducated businessman with no prior experience in land development

revealing his participation in a large peri-urban social housing development); Interview with Two Real Estate

Developers, supra note 262 (describing two principals of a social housing project, one a former lawyer, the other a

documentary film maker).

264

See e.g., Interview with El Hadji Merchant, supra note 263.

265

Meyer, supra note 20, at 225.

266

See Interview with Two Real Estate Developers, supra note 262 (describing a housing development located

approximately 30 kilometers from Niamey); Interview with El Hadji Merchant, supra note 263 (describing his

purchase and conversion of land approximately 20 kilometers outside of Niamey).

267

See Issaka, supra note 1 (arguing many speculators have entered Niamey’s land markets); Cotula et. al., supra

note 168, at 27 (arguing many urban elites are speculating in peri-urban land markets).

268

See Interview with El Hadji Merchant, supra note 263 (arguing he will leave much of his recent peri-urban

land purchase “in reserve” to allow prices to rise).

Major business actors are not the only ones fueling the red-hot peri-urban land markets. Peri-urban land

is one of Niger’s few investment opportunities, so many salaried employees (primarily civil servants) are

purchasing multiple undeveloped plots in recently subdivided neighborhoods outside of town, often while living

in small rented lodgings in the city. Meyer, supra note 20, at 233. In fact, it is rare that the first purchaser of a

newly subdivided plot actually constructs a house and moves in. Id. Most initial buyers are investors and often it

is the second or third purchaser who constructs a residence. Id. at 234 ((offering an example of one house plot in a

peri-urban neighborhood that originally was purchased for 60,000 CFA (approximately $ at current exchange

rates), that changed hands twice, and eventually sold for 2 million CFA to the person who constructed a house.)

Kelley Syracuse J. Int. L. & Comm. Vol. 47.1.

peri-urban zones.

269

However, in spite of the “social” moniker, little, if any, of the resulting

housing is within the means of poor people.

270

From the perspective of an academic studying land in Niger, this is a fascinating

transitional moment in which the rules governing peri-urban land and land use are changing

rapidly. But from the perspective of farmers living in peri-urban zones this transition signals

and end to a way of life. Whether their land is purchased by a developer, or condemned by the

state, once official title has been printed and properly registered, the purchaser’s rights are

secure and the rural people, along with their rural beliefs, rural ways of life, and rural

livelihoods, are out of the game. The transition to suburbs is irreversible

271

and the land

becomes a commodity like oranges on special in Niamey’s Petit Marche.

272

269

Alexandra Biehler, Armelle Choplin, Marie Morelle, Le Logement Sociale en Afriquie: Un Modele a

(Re)inventer?, (May 18, 2015), available at https://www.metropolitiques.eu/Le-logement-social-en-Afrique-

un.html (Last visited Sept. 23, 2019) (at p .1 arguing NGOs and international agencies have supported social

housing). Meyer, supra note 20, at 240 (mentioning social housing in Niger and arguing it does not benefit the

poor).

Based on personal observation, these social housing neighborhoods are popping up like mushrooms in

rural areas around Niamey. Because they are being developed well outside the boundaries of the city, they can be

a startling, incongruous sight as one drives through the bush. The completed neighborhood can include hundreds

of residential units, typically a mix of one, two, and three-bedroom cement, metal-roofed houses, each with a

small, walled concession surrounding it, all packed closely together. See Interview with Two Real Estate

Developers, supra note 262 (describing a social housing site under construction approximately 30 kilometers

from Niamey). They often are completely surrounded by agricultural fields where farmers go about their

traditional routines of planting and cultivating subsistence crops and husbanding their animals. See id. (describing

a new social housing site next to what appeared to be a millet field).

270

Interview with Two Real Estate Developers (insert interview source, and location) (April 30, 2018), supra note

262 (in a typical social housing project, the government and private financial institutions combine forces to make

mortgages available to prospective purchasers. The banks agree to loan money at comparatively moderate rates of

interest and the government agrees to deduct the monthly payments directly from the borrowers’ paychecks. This

means, of course, that only Nigeriens with regular paychecks, or who live overseas – together a wafer-thin slice of

Niger’s population – can take advantage of the programs); see KORLING, supra note 20, at 79 (arguing Niger claims

that provision of housing for the poor is a key to poverty reduction but in fact has provided exceedingly little that is

accessible to the poor).

271

See Interview with Two Real Estate Developers (insert interview source, and location)

(April 28, 2018), supra note 262 (arguing that once they have formal title in hand, they have no fear that farmers

will be able to challenge their ownership of land).

272

Meyer, supra note 20, at 235; see Interview with Former Gamkalle Resident and His Friend (May 5, 2018), supra

note 208 (arguing that “land has become money”); Interview with Insurance Executive, Niamey, Republic of Niger,

(May 5, 2018) (arguing “land was religious; now it is money”).

Death of Custom:

Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

Summary

Niamey was created during the colonial era on land expropriated from the nearby

villages of Gamkale and Goudel. As the city’s population steadily grew, the colonial

government expropriated and subdivided land on its periphery–land that the French considered

vacant–to provide residences for its functionaries. Once the land was subdivided, it was subject

to the Code Napoléon. However, the scale of this conversion was modest; most rural people

were unaffected, and their lives continued as before.

Niger’s post-colonial governments carried on in a manner similar to the French. As

Niamey’s population growth accelerated, the state expropriated and converted larger swaths of

surrounding land, primarily still from the domains of Goudel and Gamkale. At times,

population growth outstripped the government’s ability to subdivide land, and so informal

settlements began to appear on what had been agricultural land.

Starting in the 1990s, democratization, economic liberalization, and decentralization,

combined with accelerating population growth in Niamey, led to a dramatic increase in the

city’s expansion and an accompanying flood of land conversions from fields to suburbs.

Various sources of authority–the CUN, central government ministries, local government

officials, and chiefs–vied with one another for authority over peri-urban land transactions and

attendant spoils. However, beginning in 2010, most of the governmental actors were shoved

to the side by the entrance of private land developers, who formed mafia-like networks in

cahoots with high government officials. Suddenly, all limits to peri-urban land development

vanished and a scramble for profits ensued. Developers and speculators began purchasing,

subdividing, titling and registering formerly agricultural lands at a blistering pace, sometimes

scores of kilometers outside the city. The private developers had no reason to care about poor

Kelley Syracuse J. Int. L. & Comm. Vol. 47.1.

people which included the peasant farmers selling their ancestral lands. The government of

Niger claims they provide “social housing” to meet the needs of the poor, but in fact only

comparatively well-off Nigeriens are eligible to participate.

The next section explores who wins and who loses as a result of Niger’s peri-

urban transformation.

Winners and Losers When Peri-Urban Land is Transformed from

Customary to Formal

The physical and legal transformation of peri-urban land around Niamey produces

winners and losers.

273

In general, the winners are those with power and wealth who take

advantage of the transition to increase their bounty.

274

The losers are peasant farmers whose

livelihoods disappear and who forfeit the historical and spiritual foundations that have until

now have provided order and meaning to their lives.

275

Winners

Among scholars, it is a generally accepted nostrum that legal transformations in poor

countries benefit elites.

276

The reason is obvious: elites are better positioned to shape the

details of the new legal rules to serve their own interests.

277

Once the new rules are in place,

273

See HAGBERG, supra note 60, at 102 (arguing peri-urban land sales always produce winners and losers and that

rural people are usually the losers); see SHIPTON, supra note 8, at 144 (arguing early practitioners of land

privatization and titling in Kenya, which was a precursor to such efforts across sub-Saharan Africa, assumed

“energetic or rich Africans will be able to acquire more land and bad or poor farmers less, creating a landed and

landless class” and that “[t]his is a normal step in the evolution of a country”).

274

See Beacon Mbiba and Marie Huchzermeyer, supra note 2 (arguing local elites including officials, politicians and

traditional authorities often control land entitlements); Falk, supra note 171, at 1 (arguing land tenure reform always

ends up redistributing land from the poor to the rich); Polavarapu, supra note 104, at 98 (arguing that in Botswana

land tenure security is enjoyed only by the “rich and legally adroit”); COTULA, ET. AL., supra note 168, at 3

(arguing “elites claim land that isn’t theirs when they know registration is coming”).

275

See supra notes _ and accompanying text.

276

See Korling, supra note 20, at 78 (arguing in Niger urban policy and investment always serves elites); SHIPTON,

supra note 8 (arguing when land is converted from customary control to freehold title, “the best-informed and best-

connected people” benefit); Ubink, Tenure Security, supra note 57, at 222.

277

See Njoh, supra note 27, at 542 (arguing changes in zoning laws usually protect the rights and privileges of the

wealthy).

Death of Custom:

Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

they have the necessary knowledge, capital, and connections to consolidate their advantages

before less informed societal actors become aware of the shift.

278

The transformation of land

law in peri- urban Niger is a case in point.

279

Private Real Estate Developers and Investors and the

Government Officials with Whom They Collaborate

Private developers have emerged as the biggest winners in the conversion of peri-urban

land. At the top of the developer pyramid are the leaders of the mafia-like networks that have

infiltrated and dominated all levels of the state apparatus, and who have amassed fortunes by

converting large swaths of agricultural land into house plots.

280

But those land kingpins are

not the only private real estate actors who have thrived as a result of the transition.

Lower tiers of private developers have gotten into the game. Companies are forming

in Niamey to build the social housing developments around the city’s periphery.

281

Some

complain that their profit margins are thin. However, the recent profusion of these project

indicate that they are generating profits.

282

A third tier of wealthy elites benefit from the conversion of peri-urban land. These are

the wealthy El Hadji merchants from the city who until now have had few options for

diversifying their investments within Niger.

283

They are moving into land speculation, buying

large tracts of undeveloped agricultural property, sometimes twenty or more kilometers from the

278

See JIMU, supra note 2, at 7 (arguing that in African contexts urban actors seeking land can take advantage of

the poverty and ignorance of rural sellers).

279

See Njoh, supra note 27, at 542; see infra Part V.B.

280

See Issaka, supra note 1 (arguing certain private developers of peri-urban land have become more powerful than

governmental actors).

281

See supra note _.

282

See Issaka, supra note 1 (arguing corporations have entered the land development market and have made

substantial profits).

283

Id.; Interview with El Hadji Merchant (insert interview source, and location) (May 4, 2018), supra note 263.

Kelley Syracuse J. Int. L. & Comm. Vol. 47.1.

city.

284

Different merchants employ different strategies. Once they have established titled

ownership of the land, many subdivide it into plots even if they intend to sit on it until Niamey

grows closer and the value of the plots increases.

285

Some intend to sell the plots piecemeal to

other smaller investors, or even to potential residents.

286

Still others have grander plans to move

into the business of real estate development by constructing the social housing projects described

above.

287

Whatever the details of their development strategies, wealthy businessmen based in the

capital are mobilizing to take advantage of the shift to private ownership of land.

These private developers become so successful partly by collaborating with government

officials who can claim formal authority over land transactions. There is still lively competition

among the governmental actors to determine whose authority will prevail, but as the competition

plays out it is clear that many are prospering. They formed corrupt symbiotic relationships that

strengthened their claims to authority over government institutions and, simultaneously,

produced significant private wealth.

288

Amidst this struggle for legitimacy and advantage among multifarious organs of the

state apparatus, traditional chiefs – historically a resilient and adaptable group

289

-- have found

284

See Interview with El Hadji Merchant (insert interview source, and location) (May 4, 2018), supra note 263

(describing his speculative investment in peri-urban land outside Niamey).

285

Id.

286

Id.

287

Id.

288

It should be noted that there is another class of people, who will be mentioned only in this note, that both win and

lose as a result of the symbiotic relationship between major real estate developers and corrupt governmental

officials. They are civil servants of moderate means who are searching for housing in the vicinity of Niamey. They

are winners because the entry of private developers on the peri-urban scene has increased the number of houses and

house plots available for purchase. See Meyer, supra note 1 (arguing Niger’s efforts to create housing and financing

for civil servants has worked). They are losers because the resulting neighborhoods and houses are often poorly

planned and constructed; See also Issaka, supra note 1. Because the developers are in cahoots with the government

officials, they can maximize profits by making roads too narrow for fire trucks, eschewing drainage infrastructure,

and failing to reserve space for public utilities. Id. With regulators looking the other way, they also save money and

increase profits by constructing homes using substandard materials. Id.

289

See Kelley at note 8 & 9.

Death of Custom:

Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

opportunities to enhance their power and wealth.

290

With peri-urban land in high demand and

ambiguity concerning which state actors have the power to convert land from farms to

suburbs, rural Nigeriens have turned to chiefs, who retain much of their customary authority

over land in spite of the state’s efforts to weaken it.

291

Traditional chiefs’ approaches to peri-urban land transactions are as variable as those of the

state. Some village and canton chiefs expand their pocketbooks and their power by taking an

active role in facilitating the transfer of agricultural land to urban investors or developers.

292

In a

typical transaction, a developer from the city will approach a traditional chief whose rural

domain is 20 or more kilometers from the edge of Niamey’s existing suburbs.

293

The chief will

act as a broker, identifying a family patriarch willing to sell a large tract of family land;

sometimes with, sometimes without the extended family’s informed consent.

294

The chief may

take a finder’s fee that includes cash or a percentage of the house lots to be developed.

295

other instances, chiefs simply sell large tracts of undeveloped “chief’s lands” to investors even

though customarily they are guardians of that land and not owners.

296

290

See Janine M. Ubink, Courts and Peri-Urban Practice, supra note 194, at 28 (arguing in villages chiefs are major

actors in converting peri-urban land from agricultural to residential and that they often are the prime beneficiaries);

Benjaminsen, et.al., supra note 157, at 31 (arguing land shortages combined with increasing desire to formalize land

rights has provided a financial boon to traditional chiefs).

291

See COTULA ET. AL., supra note 168, at 12 (arguing land titling schemes in Africa did not work well, which

led to increases in chiefs’ power over land).

292

Interview with Retired Office Worker (April 28, 2018), See supra note 262 (recounting his purchase of plots of

land that were endorsed by canton chiefs).

293

Interview with Two Real Estate Developers (April 30, 2018), See supra note 262 (arguing their social housing

project, located approximately 30 kilometers outside Niamey, began with a purchase of land from farmers);

Interview with Former Mayor of Niamey Commune 5 (May 2, 2018), See also supra note 180 (arguing most peri-

urban land sales begin when a buyer approaches the head of a family).

294

See Janine M. Ubink, Courts and Peri-Urban Practice, supra note 194, at 37 (arguing chiefs in Ghana sometimes

connive with family elders to sell land out from under the control of extended families).

295

Interview with Retired Office Worker (April 28, 2018), See supra note 262 (arguing that when land is

subdivided, the chiefs always get their cut and providing the example of Niamey’s Haro Banda neighborhood, where

20% of all the newly created plots were divided among chiefs and government officials); See also Motcho, supra

note 48, at 7 (arguing chiefs have become central actors in suburbanization and that they profit by, among other

things, receiving compensation in the form of parcels).

296

See Bron-Saidatou, supra note 26, at 10, 27 (arguing under customary law chiefs are guardians of undeveloped

land, not owners); see also Interview with Canton Chief of Koure (May 3, 2018), supra note 100 (claiming –

Kelley Syracuse J. Int. L. & Comm. Vol. 47.1.

100

Even chiefs who do not take an active role in selling or developing peri-urban land

benefit from the transactions, at least in the short term. When investors or developers arrive in

the village and come to agreement with a family patriarch, the chief, for a fee, will create a

written document referred to as a detention coutumiere (customary holding).

297

That document

represents the developer’s or investor’s first step in the long and tortuous process (one that is

simpler for the land development kingpins with political connections)

298

of obtaining full,

individual ownership and registered title over the land.

299

In theory, the chief investigates the

transaction before granting the detention coutumiere, ensuring that the seller has a legitimate

claim over the land and that the seller’s family, many of whom may claim primary or secondary

rights in land, approve of the sale.

300

However, as described in Part V.B.1. below, the sales often

proceed without the extended family’s knowledge or acquiescence.

incorrectly – that in pre-colonial Niger all land “belonged” to canton chiefs and that in recent time some village

chiefs have claimed ownership of land, obtained title, and sold it to developers); Interview with a Highly Placed

Official in Niger’s Ministry of the Environment and of Durable Development (May 11, 2018), See The World

Factbook at note 20 (arguing village chiefs in Niger claim ownership of vast tracts and “profit personally from the

sales”); Ubink, Courts and Peri-Urban Practice, supra note 194, at 30 (arguing chiefs in Ghana wrongly claim they

have the right to displace individual users of land and either sell it or lease it to strangers); Joseph Blocher, Building

on Custom: Land Tenure Policy and Economic Development in Ghana, Yale Hum. Rts. & Dev. L. J. 166, 168-169

(2006) (note) (arguing chiefs sometimes sell land “out from under” users); COTULA, ET. AL., supra note 168, at

27 (arguing chiefs sell land they do not own).

It should be noted that at least some chiefs take a hard line against the sale of peri-urban land to outsiders.

For example, the chef de canton of Hamdallaye, a town a half-hour drive out the Fillingue Road from Niamey,

claims he has steadfastly refused to authorize sales of customary agricultural land to investors or developers.

Interview with Hamdallaye Canton Chief (May 1, 2018), supra note 17. He also uses his traditional authority and

prestige to prevent his subjects from circumventing his authority and seeking authorization from the local mayor’s

office. Id. However, this reluctance to permit land conversion appears not to be well grounded in formal law and

is the exception rather than the rule. See Interview with Canton Chief of Koure (May 3, 2018), supra note 100

(arguing that he lacks authority to prevent land sales); Interview with Former Mayor of Niamey Commune 5

(May 2, 2018), supra note 180 (arguing canton chiefs lack authority to block land sales, even in rural areas).

297

See Korling at note 1 (mentioning detention coutumere), (arguing chiefs often charge 5,000 FCFA to issue

certificates of sale for village land).

298

See generally Meyer, supra notes 20; see also Korling, supra note 20; Interview with Former Mayor of Niamey

Commune 5, supra note 180.

299

See Bron-Saidatou, supra note 26, at 24 (describing the process of formalizing land).

300

Meyer, supra note 20, at 190. See generally Kelly, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8; Interview with Canton

Chief of Koure, supra note 100 (arguing chiefs preside over historical examinations to determine who has rights to

agricultural lands).

101

Death of Custom:

Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

Whether or not the chief thoroughly vets the land sale, he receives his fee and thus becomes a

short-term winner in the conversion of land from fields to suburbs.

301

Losers

Immediate Losers: Secondary Rights Holders

When a land developer or speculator purchases a plot of agricultural land located in a

peri-urban area – usually from a family patriarch or chief

302

– the complicated customary

law bundle of nested, contingent, secondary rights that heretofore determined access to that

land

303

instantaneously vanishes.

304

Rural people who depend on secondary rights in land

find themselves with nothing.

Women in rural communities are a prime example.

305

Among rural Nigeriens, women do

not customarily have the right to inherit or control agricultural land, however, this does not mean

that they entirely lack rights in the lands controlled by their fathers, husbands, or brothers.

306

described above, women normally enjoy the right to enter land to harvest medicinal herbs,

301

See Meyer, supra note 20, at 190, 252 (arguing chiefs extract fees for approving land sales); Korling, supra note

20, at 125. Although the chiefs are “short-term” winners, one can speculate that their authority, which is practically

and spiritually rooted in the community’s lands, will wither as the chiefs convert the community land to individually

owned parcels. See generally Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8; Becker, supra note 104; SHIPTON, supra

note 8; Kelley, Unintended Consequences, supra note 15.

302

See Ubink, Courts and Peri-Urban Practice, supra note 194 at 37 (arguing chiefs in Ghana sometimes connive

with family elders to sell land out from under the control of extended families); see also Interview with Former

Mayor of Niamey Commune 5, supra note 180; Korling, supra note 20, at 106 (arguing land sales on the edge of the

city usually start when a buyer approaches the head of a family).

303

See Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 102, at 682; SHIPTON, supra note 8, at 309; Becker, supra note 104;

Chimhown & Woodhouse, supra note 104; Polavarapu, supra note 104; Kelley, Unintended Consequences, supra

note 9, at 1007, 1015.

304

See Chimhowu & Woodhouse, supra note 104, at 347-8 (arguing land titling often extinguishes secondary

“safety-net” rights such as wood gathering); see also Ubink, Tenure Security, supra note 57, at 222 (arguing titling

schemes often ignore secondary rights holders); COTULA ET AL., supra note 168, at 18 (arguing land titling often

leads to loss of secondary rights by women and pastoralists); Polavarapu, supra note 104, at 114 (arguing that

“nested rights” disappear when land is turned into a commodity).

305

Polavarapu, supra note 104, at 99-100.

306

See Polavarapu, supra note 104, at 111 (describing women’s secondary land rights under pre-colonial customary

law in Botswana); see Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 682.

Kelley Syracuse J. Int. L. & Comm. Vol. 47.1.

102

collect straw, or plant a small garden.

307

These rights in land are not merely at the sufferance of

their husbands and male relatives; they are part of a finely-honed, well understood cultural and

spiritual complex.

308

If a male to denies or violate a woman’s customary rights, he will bring

shame on himself and his family, and the spirits tied to the land may sanction him.

309

Later-born men can be frozen out when their older brothers or uncles sell the family

lands.

310

As described in Part III. A., the family patriarch typically acts in the role of caretaker or

trustee for the extended family’s lands.

311

This means that a later-born man must seek the

patriarch’s approval before clearing or cultivating a new plot, but it does not mean that the

patriarch in any sense owns the family lands.

312

However, if the patriarch sells the land to an

outsider, the land becomes governed by state law, not customary law. Thus, the later-born

man’s access rights suddenly disappear,

313

whether or not the patriarch decides to share the

financial proceeds from the sale.

314

Customary slaves – a group most Nigeriens prefer not to discuss

315

– also lose their

culturally enforceable secondary rights in land when it is sold to developers or investors. It is

beyond the scope of this article to discuss the complicated bundle of Nigerien social categories

307

Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 682.

308

See Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 683; see also Hagberg, supra note 60, at 104 (arguing those

who attempt to sell lineage lands in rural Burkina Faso risk sanction from the spirit world).

309

See Hagberg, supra note 60, at 10 (arguing earth priests and elders regard the earth “as a divinity and fear that the

violation of rituals may endanger not merely the individual’s well-being but community life in general”).

310

See Kelley, Unintended Consequences, supra note 9, at 1007 (arguing younger men in Nigerien villages have

limited rights to land access and are subject to the demands of the greater group and village Elders).

311

See id.

312

See id.

313

See Chimhowu & Woodhouse, supra note 104, at 347-8; see also Ubink, Tenure Security, supra note 57, at 222;

COTULA ET AL., supra note 168, at 18; Polavarapu, supra note 104, at 114.

314

JIMU, supra note 2, at 363 (arguing some sellers of customary land spend the proceeds on frivolity).

315

See Kelley, Unintended Consequences, supra note 9, at 1012 (arguing Nigerien government officials deny that

slavery exists in Niger).

103

Death of Custom:

Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

inexactly lumped together under the English word “slave” or the French word esclave.

316

It must

suffice to say that under Nigerien customary law, slaves have a culturally enforceable right to

demand of village founders the use of sufficient agricultural lands to feed themselves and their

families.

317

In some villages, slave lineages have been cultivating tracts of land for generations,

land they do not control, but to which they have culturally enforceable access rights.

318

Under

custom, a patriarch that unceremoniously ejected a slave from agricultural lands would bring

shame on his lineage.

319

If, on the other hand, the patriarch sells the family land cultivated by

the slave, the culturally defined and enforceable rights described above simply vanish.

320

Once

the transaction is complete, the legal context instantaneously morphs: customary law holds its

relevance and “ownership” instantaneously vests in the individual who holds the piece of paper

reflecting title.

2. Long Term Losers

a. Those Who Depend on Customary Land for Livelihoods

For secondary rights holders, the loss resulting from the legal conversion of land from

custom to formal state law are sudden and dramatic. For primary rights holders, the losses

become apparent over time.

Imagine, for example, a village patriarch in a peri-urban zone sells all or much of his

family’s ancestral lands to a developer or speculator. Assume he obtained some form of

316

See id. at 1013-16.

317

See id. at 1017, 1022 (arguing Nigerian custom requires nobles to make agricultural land available to slave, but

in adopting western notions of land law, they can abandon this.)

318

See id. at 1034.

319

Id. at 1032.

320

Kelley, Unintended Consequences, supra note 9, at 1032.

Kelley Syracuse J. Int. L. & Comm. Vol. 47.1.

104

permission from the sale from all or most of the heads of household in his lineage, though that is

not always the case.

321

Assume also that he receives a large amount of money in exchange for the land. I have

heard of one such transaction for which the purchaser paid the equivalent of $20,000

322

- a

substantial fortune in a country where most people live off of less than two dollars per day.

323

The money rarely lasts. In African locales, where peri-urban ancestral land is being sold to

developers, stories abound of patriarchs who spend the proceeds on la belle vie: drink, women,

and flashy possessions.

324

In Niger, a country where most rural people profess and practice

Islam and live sober, acetic lives,

325

the money may not go to alcohol and high living but

instead to satisfy the lineage’s pent-up demand for life’s necessities.

326

Young men who have

delayed marriage because they lack money for a bride price payment require financial backing

from the patriarch.

327

Family members living in grass huts require the construction of more

expensive banco houses with metal roofs.

328

Linage members who have been making due

321

See Blocher, supra note 296, at 168-9 (arguing chiefs in Ghana sometimes sell land out from under its rightful

users); see also Ubink, supra note 57, at 216 (similar); Bron-Saidatou, supra note 26, at 127 (arguing chiefs in Niger

do not own communal land but sometimes sell it without consultation).

322

Interview with Canton Chief of Koure, supra note 100 (arguing purchases of rural land in Koure, near Niamey,

sometimes amount to $10,000 or $20,000, a huge amount in Niger).

323

See Niger: Country Profile, WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION, available at

https://www.who.int/hac/crises/ner/background/profile/en (last visited Sept. 27, 2019) (reporting that over 60% of

Niger’s population lives with less than $1 a day). See also Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015:

Niger, U.S. DEP’T OF STATE (Jan. 20, 2015), available at https://2009-

2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/humanrightsreport/index.htm?year=2015&dlid=252713 (last visited Sept. 27, 2019)

(reporting that in 2011, 48.2% of Niger’s population lived under the poverty income level of $1.70 a day).

324

See JIMU, supra note 2, at 38 (arguing most proceeds from land sales in Malawi are spent on “beer, prostitutes,

and pot,” and on general “conspicuous consumption”).

325

Kelley, Exporting Western Law to the Developing World, supra note 134. My characterization of Nigeriens

leading sober and ascetic lives is based on my years of experience and observation in rural communities there.

326

Interview with Canton Chief of Koure, supra note 100. See also Becker, supra note 104, at 120 (arguing some

sellers of ancestral land in Mali, a predominantly Muslim country, spend lavishly by giving gifts and offering their

friends rides in their new cars); JIMU, supra note 2, at 312-3 (arguing in Malawi land sales are often motivated by

practical financial concerns such as the payment of school fees, medical bills, bride-wealth payments, or tombstones

for dead relatives, though some of these justifications are “after-the-fact rationalizations.”)

327

Interview with Canton Chief of Koure, supra note 100.

328

I base this statement on personal knowledge of Nigerien friends who live in the U.S. and who send home

remittances so their relatives can switch from grass to banco.

105

Death of Custom:

Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

with donkey carts feel the urgent need for motorcycles.

329

And, of course, the sale of

agricultural land means that the lineage’s ability to grow its own staple crops diminishes or

disappears, so they must purchase their grain at the market if they are to avoid starvation.

330

The small fortune disappears quickly.

331

When the money is gone, rural Nigeriens have no place else to turn. Niger has no

equivalent of mid-20

century Detroit or Chicago where former agricultural workers can

migrate to seek factory jobs.

332

Even if such jobs existed, the former subsistence farmers

would have no relevant skills to offer, since the vast majority are illiterate.

333

In short, when

the proceeds from the sale of ancestral lands run out, rural people will suffer.

334

329

Interview with Canton Chief of Koure, supra note 100.

330

See JIMU, supra note 2, at 71 (arguing that in Malawi the conversion of peri-urban land led to declines in food

production and increased poverty and insecurity for rural people).

331

Interview with a Highly Placed Official in Niger’s Ministry of the Environment and of Durable Development,

supra note 258 (arguing peasant farmers are “selling their patrimony” and that in many cases the money they receive

only lasts for months or years). It should be noted that counter-examples exist. There are instances where those

who sell their ancestral land invest wisely or start small businesses and prosper. JIMU, supra note 2, at 7 (arguing

some sellers of ancestral lands in Malawi use the proceeds to start a small business or obtain a commercial driving

license and prosper, though most spend the money quickly). Of the many Nigeriens I have interviewed over the

years, I have met one who prospered as a result of land sales. He was from the village of Goudel. Niger’s

government expropriated much of his family’s agricultural land over the decades. After the start of democratization

in the early 1990s, the government tried to compensate him and similarly situated Goudel farmers by granting them

a share of the undeveloped suburban house plots that had been carved out of their old fields. This man sold many of

those house plots and used the cash to buy a bar in Niamey. Over the following decades, the bar grew into a small

empire of bars, nightclubs, hotels, tourist businesses, transport, and real estate holdings. However, as the text

indicates, such economic success stories are the exception, not the rule.

332

See SHIPTON, supra, note 8, at 144 (arguing Kenya lacked the industry to create jobs for people made landless by

land titling; see also JIMU, supra note 2, at 7 (arguing wage jobs were not available for Malawi citizens rendered

landless).

333

The World Factbook (Niger), U.S. Cent. Intelligence Agency, available at https://

www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ng.html (last visited Sept. 27, 2019) (reporting 19.1% of

Nigeriens over the age of 15 are literate).

334

Interview with Canton Chief of Koure, supra note 100 (arguing Nigerien farmers who well their land “end up

poor”); Interview with Former Mayor of Niamey’s Central Government, in Niamey, Niger (May 11, 2018 (arguing

proceeds of rural land sale go for weddings, trips, and motorcycles, and “then they’re left with nothing—they

become beggars and thieves”); Interview with Judge, in Niamey, Niger (May 9, 2018 (arguing after rural land sales

in Niger, “pretty soon the money is gone and they [the farmers] starve”). See also Jimu, supra note 2, at 338

(arguing land sellers in Malawi who cannot find wage labor end up destitute); Falk, supra note 171, at 1 (arguing

that in African contexts landlessness is synonymous with poverty).

Kelley Syracuse J. Int. L. & Comm. Vol. 47.1.

106

b. Those Who Define Themselves, Their Communities, Their

History, and Their Religion with Reference to Ancestral Land

For rural people in peri-urban Niger, hunger is not the only consequence of land sales

because land represents more than just a means of food production.

335

The legal

transformation of ancestral land into a salable commodity – in effect converting land into

money

336

– effaces the historical, cultural, and spiritual legacy that until now had given shape

and strength to rural Nigerien communities.

337

Rural Nigeriens may be desperately poor by international standards,

338

but overall,

they lead lives of honor and purpose.

339

They take pride in offering food and shelter to

travelers.

340

If a stranger wants to extend their stay in the village, the village chief or other

lineage heads will accord him access to enough land to feed himself and his family.

341

Villagers look after one another, periodically gathering together to cultivate and harvest the

fields of sick or recently deceased members of the community or to build huts for newlywed

couples.

342

Respect for age is common.

343

Theft is rare.

344

Rural Nigeriens generally live in

peace, mediating their differences in ways that Americans should emulate: they gather in

public, talk things through, and endeavor to find compromise, a modus vivendi that permits

them to navigate the difficult business of living together amidst some of the harshest

335

See supra Part III.A

336

Interview with Former Gamkalle Resident and His Friend, supra note 208; Interview with Former Mayor of

Niamey’s Central Government, supra note 334.

337

See Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 667, 710, n. 135; see also SHIPTON, supra note 8, at 14.

338

See Human Development Reports, supra note 19; The World Factbook (Niger), supra note 19.

339

Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 667.

340

See id. (arguing visitors to Nigerien villages “are plied with food and gifts”).

341

See id. at 666 (describing a family making agricultural land available to an outsider who wished to settle in the

village).

342

See id. (arguing in the Zarma language of Niger, the word bogu describes communal labor, often undertaken on

behalf of a villager in need and is the rough equivalent of “barn raising” in English).

343

Id. at 667; see also SHIPTON, supra note 8, at 14 (arguing respect for age is common among the Luo people of

Kenya).

344

Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 673.

107

Death of Custom:

Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

geographic and climatic conditions on earth.

345

These positive attributes of Nigerien rural society arise out of an undivided complex of

spiritual, historical, and cultural beliefs in which land, including individuals’ rights in and

obligations toward land, is a central tenet.

346

Land gives shape to rural peoples’ identities and

sense of self.

347

Even considering the recent increase of Islamic influence, most rural

Nigeriens believe their ancestors made pacts with the spirits who control the land and that

those spirits, along with the spirits of their ancestors continue to watch over the decisions and

actions villagers take.

348

A young man in the village avoids unruly behavior because he has

been raised that way, but also because he does not want to be the one to spark the spirits’

wrath and thereby diminishes the village’s barka.

349

He accepts his father’s or uncle’s

decisions about which plot of land to cultivate, and about when he can begin cultivating for

his own rather than the extended family’s account, because to object, to rebel, would injure

not only his family but would insult the original land spirits and the spirits of his ancestors.

350

That same young man, once his elders have accorded him a portion of the family land for

345

See id. at 710. I am fully aware that depicting rural life in Niger in this way risks sparking the ire of scholars who

condemn as simplistic the colonial and post-colonial thesis that rural Africans live in harmony with themselves and

nature. See generally Mark Davidheiser, Harmony, Peacemaking, and Power: Controlling Processes and African

Mediation, 23 CONFLICT RESOL. Q. 281, 282-6 (2006) (summarizing various critiques of the “harmony thesis”).

But ire be damned. Yes, rural Nigeriens sometimes vie with one another over resources. Yes, intractable conflicts

sometimes arise within and among villages that can only be resolved with outside intervention. Yet, the cooperative

practices described above, and the overall peaceful, positive nature of Nigerien villages, is both an ideal toward

which Nigeriens strive and an empirical fact.

346

See Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 704 (arguing land is a key element in maintaining village

harmony); see also Becker, supra note 104, at 115 (arguing customary land helps “define cultural identity through

social relations”).

347

Shipton, supra note 8, at 110-11, 17 (arguing that the Luo people of Kenya view themselves as belonging to the

land and, through the medium of the land, belonging to other people and that land is “tied up with some of the most

intimate, emotionally charged dimensions of personhood and pride”).

348

See Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 647-8.

349

Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 704; see also Hagberg, supra note 60, at 99 (arguing village leaders

in Burkina Faso consider the land “as a divinity and fear that the violation of rituals may endanger not merely the

individual’s well-being but community life in general”).

350

Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 704; JIMU, supra note 2, at 8 (arguing land is a symbolic medium

through which living people connect with their ancestors and their traditions); Blocher supra note 296, at 174

(arguing trust and honor can play a vital role in consistent land practices leading to stability and efficiency).

Kelley Syracuse J. Int. L. & Comm. Vol. 47.1.

108

cultivation, will avoid waste and certainly avoid sale, because he understands that interest in

the land is shared not only by his living relations, but by those who lived before and those

members of the family and community yet unborn.

351

When land is titled and sold out of the community, those beliefs that tie together history,

spirituality and law disappear.

352

If the spirits and their influence are displaced by a legal title

– a piece of paper filed in a distant town saying an outsider now owns the property – that

young man can take his proceeds, (assuming he is not struck by lightning or otherwise quickly

felled by illness or other misfortune)

353

and ignore concerns about the ancestors’ wrath.

354

can disregard the wishes of his father, his lineage head, and his village chief, because they no

longer have influence over his and his children’s future access to land.

355

That issue will be

decided not by village elders, but by who can decode the foreign, formal legal process, obtain

the necessary piece of paper and properly register it in the distant cadaster.

In sum, land is an essential aspect of the social, spiritual, historical and legal complex that

provides structure and meaning to rural Nigerien communities. Removing land from this

351

See Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8; see also Njoh, supra note 27, at 555 (arguing land sales are

unthinkable in Nigerien customary law because those who control land hold it act as custodians for future

generations); Blocher, supra note 296, at 174 (arguing chiefs in Ghana hold land in trust for the living, the dead, and

the not yet born).

352

Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 704-7; see Korling, supra note 20, at 133-34 (arguing authority in

Nigerien rural communities is tied to land and those who alienate land lose their authority); Becker, supra note 104,

at 115 (arguing “Where land is not a commodity, its non-market values define cultural identity through social

relations. When and where land sales occur marks a fundamental agrarian change that breaks cultural ties to the

land…”).

353

See SHIPTON, supra note 8, at 159 (arguing that in Kenya those who title an alienate family land “expose

themselves to the wrath of the spirits”).

354

Becker, supra note 104, at 121 (arguing in Mali, land sales are leading to a decline in cooperative spirit of the

ethnic group’s values). See also Ubink, supra note 57, at 223 (arguing studies of peri-urban land sales show

abundant evidence of high social cost, especially for the poor).

355

Kelley, Squeezing Parakeets, supra note 8, at 70; see also Becker, supra note 104, at 121. (arguing land sales in

peri- urban Mali contribute to “a decline in the cooperative spirit of the ethnic group’s values” that will “radically

change the village in the next generation”).

109

Death of Custom:

Winners and Losers in the Legal Transformation of Peri-Urban Land in Niger

complex will profoundly disrupt a system that has permitted Nigeriens to persevere for many

generations amidst extraordinarily difficult conditions.

356

See Becker, supra note 104, at 115 (arguing land conversion creates “new territories with new boundaries, new

rules and new authorities claiming new legitimacy to control access” leading to “a profound transformation of

society”); SHIPTON, supra note 8, at 128-29 (arguing land titling in Kenya threatens to upset the deeply rooted

land-related traditions and may lead to social disruption).