Precarious Urban Lives: The Struggle for Title in Africa’s Urban Future

By Wellington Muzengeza

Africa’s skylines climb higher, cities sprawl, yet its citizenship collapses into shadow. From Hopley to Eastview, Solomia to Gimboki, Mufakose and beyond, millions inhabit spaces that are urban in fact but stateless in law, territories where homes are denied recognition, communities stripped of rights, and lives suspended without the most basic instrument of dignity: the title deed.

These are not “informal settlements” in the neutral language of planners; they are architectures of exclusion, geographies of political risk, and laboratories of precarity where belonging is provisional, and banishment is always imminent.

To call them informal is to sanitise injustice. They are the untitled city: a deliberate system of invisibility, where the absence of recognition is not oversight but strategy, and where the denial of title is the denial of citizenship itself.

The Civic Void

The absence of title is not a bureaucratic hiccup; it is the deliberate construction of civic invisibility. It renders millions perpetually unsafe, their tenure dangling at the mercy of eviction orders, demolitions, or political whim. It renders them unwealthy, for unrecognised shelter cannot be collateralised, cannot anchor generational wealth, and cannot be transformed into mobility or permanence. In Zimbabwe’s constrained political terrain, visibility itself is legitimacy, and legitimacy is protection.

To be unseen is to be unprotected. To be unrecognised is to be unrepresented, and to erase or ignore the organisations, such as Coalition for Market and Liberal Solutions (COMALISO) and allied think tanks, that labour to make these communities visible is to reproduce the very invisibility this struggle denounces.

Recognition must extend not only to citizens but also to the institutions that fight for them, for their visibility is the scaffolding upon which democratic protection and reform are built.

Insecurity as Governance

Urban poverty is too often reduced to wages, unemployment, or the informal hustle, but its deepest wound is statelessness within the state.

In Hopley, a family may build a home, raise children, and contribute to the city’s economy, yet remain legally invisible. Their labour produces shelter but not wealth, community but not legacy.

This invisibility is not incidental; it is engineered. Title deeds are withheld not because institutions are sluggish but because power is strategic.

Deeds become political currency, rationed to reward loyalty and withheld to punish dissent. In this calculus, insecurity is not a governance failure; it is the architecture of authority itself, a system designed to keep citizens perpetually precarious, perpetually dependent, and perpetually denied the dignity of ownership.

Why Advocacy Actors Matter

If invisibility is a political condition, then visibility is political power, the difference between exclusion and recognition, between vulnerability and protection.

This is why acknowledging the work of advocacy organisations is not optional; it is indispensable. Groups such as the Coalition for Market and Liberal Solutions (COMALISO), alongside civic actors and urban policy think tanks, are not passive observers but architects of recognition, forcing the untitled city into the national consciousness and onto the policy agenda.

They are the ones dismantling the architecture of invisibility, brick by brick, through research, advocacy, and coalition‑building.

To ignore their work is to reproduce the very marginalisation this struggle condemns. To recognise them is to strengthen the moral argument, to ground it in lived reality, and to affirm that the fight for title is not theoretical; it is already underway, carried forward by institutions that embody the very visibility they demand for citizens.

Engines of Reform

Across Zimbabwe and the wider region, think tanks and civic organisations are not merely commentators but active architects of reform, shaping the discourse on land governance and urban justice, pressing regulators to modernise titling frameworks, influencing legislation to strengthen tenure security, and advancing property rights as the bedrock of democratic participation.

Institutions such as COMALISO embody this intellectual and activist labour, conducting fieldwork, documenting lived realities, convening diverse stakeholders, and producing the evidence base that policymakers can no longer ignore.

Their interventions ensure that debates on tenure security are not abstract exercises in theory but grounded in data, community voices, and ongoing struggles for recognition.

By anchoring the conversation in tangible efforts, these organisations provide credible reference points for international partners, donors, and development agencies, demonstrating that the pursuit of reform is not speculative but already unfolding in practice, driven by actors who refuse to allow invisibility to remain the default condition of Africa’s urban poor.

The Global South’s Mirror

Across the Global South, the paradoxes of informality are etched with striking clarity. Scholars such as Payne, Durand‑Lasserve, and Rakodi long warned of the “limits of land titling,” reminding us that deeds alone cannot secure tenure when institutions are corrupt, captured, or lethargic.

More recent analyses, including the 2026 ScienceDirect review of “lock‑in effects,” reveal how the absence of tenure magnifies vulnerability to climate hazards and traps households in cycles of marginality that reproduce exclusion across generations.

Ethiopia’s proliferation of “bogus contracts” illustrates the improvisational legality through which the poor attempt to claim space, fragile documents that mimic recognition but collapse under scrutiny. 

Latin America demonstrates that titling may enhance visibility but does not automatically prevent displacement, for political will and institutional integrity remain decisive.

Rwanda, by contrast, shows how participatory recognition can transform informal land into civic agency, embedding ownership within collective frameworks of reform, yet despite these contextual variations, one truth converges across continents: land without title is dead capital, a silenced asset that cannot be banked, leveraged, or transformed into the generational security upon which democracy and dignity depend.

Felt Security vs. Legal Fragility

JeanLouis Van Gelder’s work exposes a profound paradox at the heart of informality: residents of untitled settlements often cultivate a sense of security through dense social bonds, mutual trust, and the everyday practices of belonging that stitch communities together, yet this fragile “felt security” collapses the moment eviction threats are issued, climate shocks strike, or political manipulation intrudes.

What informality generates in identity and solidarity, it simultaneously denies in permanence and protection. It offers presence but not recognition, shelter but not collateral, survival but not security. In the absence of title, belonging remains provisional, unbankable, and incapable of anchoring intergenerational futures.

Reform Requires an Ecosystem

No single actor can dismantle the entrenched crisis of the untitled city; reform demands coalitions that weave together the intellectual force of think tanks such as COMALISO, the mobilising energy of civil society organisations, the resources and innovation of privatesector actors in housing and finance, the regulatory authority of government ministries, and the transnational solidarity of diaspora networks advocating for rights.

Only through this ecosystem of collaboration can legitimacy be strengthened, policy uptake accelerated, and reform transformed from episodic gestures into systemic change.

It is in the convergence of these diverse actors, each amplifying the other, that the architecture of invisibility can be dismantled, and the foundations of recognition, dignity, and democratic ownership firmly established.

Towards Reform

We must reject the architecture of invisibility, cities stripped of names, homes denied recognition, lives robbed of dignity.

No African city can claim completeness until its residents are titled, for urban strategy must begin not with charity or temporary relief but with the uncompromising foundations of ownership, recognition, and rights, yet the moral argument must be consistent: if we demand visibility and dignity for citizens, we must extend the same recognition to the institutions that advocate for them, for their visibility amplifies the visibility of the communities they defend.

To title the untitled is to anchor democracy in the soil of everyday life, to convert dead capital into living futures, and to reclaim belonging as the cornerstone of Africa’s urban destiny, a destiny that cannot be deferred, diluted, or denied.

A Wound Across Generations

The untitled city is not a blemish to be overlooked; it is a wound that bleeds across generations, eroding dignity and foreclosing futures.

To heal it, we must insist, unequivocally, that every African family has the right to recognition, the right to security, and the right to transform shelter into permanence.

The struggle for title is inseparable from the struggle for democracy itself, for ownership is not mere paperwork but the architecture of belonging, the anchor of citizenship, and the foundation of generational wealth, and visibility, of citizens, of communities, and of the advocacy actors who defend them, is not optional; it is strategic power.

Visibility is the first step toward recognition, the pathway to reform, and the cornerstone of a just urban future.

To title the untitled is to convert dead capital into living futures, to reclaim the right to belong, and to ensure that Africa’s urban destiny is built not on exclusion but on the solid ground of rights, recognition, and dignity.

Wellington Muzengeza is a Political Risk Analyst and Urban Strategist offering incisive insight on urban planning, infrastructure, leadership succession, and governance reform across Africa’s evolving post‑liberation urban landscapes.