The Homeowner Ideology: Economic (F)Utility of Real Property Rights in Four African Cities

While homeownership has clear benefits among the impoverished, The Homeowner Ideology shows that the utility of real property rights as an economic resource are severely limited in sub-Saharan African cities. Although global poverty has declined since 1990, it remains widespread in Subsahara, the region with the highest proportion of the global population living in slums. Mainstream thinking in development studies is dominated by market fundamentalist neoclassical economics and the premise that ownership reduces poverty. Singumbe Muyeba contends that this neoliberal premise is flawed and unsupported by data within the African context. Muyeba argues that property rights function as structured idle capital on the formal market in African cities and the persistence of homeownership as the intervention of choice is explained by the influence of neoliberal ideology, intergenerational transfer of homeownership culture within the family, and the state’s deliberate and active support for homeownership tenure.

Singumbe Muyeba is Assistant Professor of African Studies at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver.