Land tenure and mining in Tanzania

Tanzania is a relatively new mining country. This study argues that unclear land and mining rights, and conceptual differences in how land and mining rights are perceived, contribute to considerate conflict in the country and to a feeling among both local people and human rights advocacy groups that the government has betrayed ordinary people.1 The main challenge with the current legislations is that there was little or no coordination between the lawmakers at the time when the land and mining laws were drafted in the late 1990s. The Village Land Act goes far in providing ordinary people with customary rights to land – but since there has been no surveying or registration, these rights are fluent and unclear. Moreover, since all land is under the president/state, people don’t own land, but have use rights. In cases where the government needs the land for “development purposes” like mining, the law allows the government to order people to move. According to the law, occupants of the land will be paid compensation for the investment/work that they have done on the land, but not for the land itself.