Around the book by: Diongue, M., Lavigne Delville, P. and Faye Diouf, I., 2025, In search of practical norms of communal land governance. Allocations, regularizations and subdivisions in six peri-urban municipalities in Senegal, Dakar, Presses Universitaires de Dakar, 175 p.
The speaker: : Momar Diongue (Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar) et Philippe Lavigne Delville (UMR SENS, IRD)
Date: 21/11/2025
12.30-13.30 (Heure de Bruxelles)
As institutions responsible for managing land within the national domain, Senegalese municipalities are regularly accused of being major actors in land grabbing and land conflicts. Conversely, local elected officials denounce the practices of land administration and state services, which they accuse of confiscating their prerogatives, undermining their authority and their efforts in land governance. While the existence of practices that do not comply with the law is widely acknowledged, their extent and causes have been little investigated. Focusing on six municipalities with significant land-related stakes, located in peri-urban areas or in the Senegal River delta, this book offers an in-depth analysis of municipal land practices: those of elected officials and municipal technicians, as well as those of landholders, private developers, land buyers, land administration, etc. It highlights the underlying logics. Far from making value judgments, the aim is to make visible the practical norms that govern land practices.
Momar DIONGUE is a lecturer-researcher in the Department of Geography at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar. He is the director of the Laboratory of Human Geography. His research focuses on the relationships between metropolization, peri-urbanization, and governance from the perspective of land, housing, and urban production.
Philippe LAVIGNE DELVILLE holds a PhD in social anthropology (EHESS – 1994), following initial training as an agricultural economist at INAPG (1986), and a habilitation (HDR) in anthropology from the University of Lyon II (2011). He is a research director at IRD, a member of the GIS Pôle Foncier, and a former president of the Association for the Anthropology of Social Change and Development (APAD). At the crossroads of development anthropology and the political sociology of public action, his current research focuses on land policies and operations in rural West Africa (Benin, Senegal), examining the complex processes of negotiating change within policies, forms of political mobilization around land issues, and the formalization of land rights.
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