Goodfellow, T. (2017) Taxing property in a neo-developmental state: the Politics of urban land value capture in Rwanda and Ethiopia. African Affairs, 116 (465). pp. 549-572. ISSN 0001-9909
Abstract
Of the African states experiencing sustained growth and poverty-reduction in recent decades, Rwanda and Ethiopia stand out due to the scope of their development visions and relatively effective state-driven transformation, leading them to be compared to the East Asian ‘developmental states’ with increased frequency. This article argues that these two states are better conceived as ‘neo-developmental’, due to important differences in the international and national constraints they face compared with the East Asian ‘tigers’. One effect of these differences is the difficulty of attracting investment into manufacturing industry, and the consequent concentration of capital in high-end urban real estate. This underscores the need for effective land value capture and property taxation, which featured strongly in the East Asian cases. Currently, however, both Rwanda and Ethiopia lack effective mechanisms for capturing the value of urban property in a way that is sustainable, redistributive and developmental. The article explores the politics of efforts to introduce property tax in both cases. It argues that property taxation has been obstructed by conflicting imperatives on land reform and tax reform, alongside resistance from vested interests created by the rapid generation of real estate-based wealth in the absence of other sufficiently lucrative investment options.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2017 The Author. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal African Society. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Urban Studies & Planning (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number INSTITUTE OF DEVELOPMENT STUDIES GO/12001 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 17 Jun 2016 11:36 |
Last Modified: | 18 Aug 2023 13:26 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1093/afraf/adx020 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:100815 |