• Working Paper

‘Cadaster-First’ vs ‘Property Tax-First’ Approaches to Property Tax Reform: Evidence from a Land-Titling and Property Tax Reform Program in Senegal

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This paper examines Senegal’s efforts in property identification and registration reforms, aimed at boosting local government property tax revenues and unlocking land wealth potential. These reforms, supported by funding from the Senegalese government, the World Bank, and the French Development Agency, are executed through three distinct programs. A preliminary analysis indicates that the progress of these reform efforts is not aligning with initial expectations.

This paper employs two prevalent models—the property-tax first and cadaster-first approaches—as its analytical framework. It juxtaposes Senegal’s reform strategy with those implemented in Togo, Zambia, and Freetown. The focus is on evaluating the efficacy of registration activities, analyzing the costs and resources involved, and assessing the degree to which these efforts achieve their intended outcomes. It provides a nuanced understanding of the strengths and limitations of each approach in the context of property tax reform.

Authors

Policy Lead

Research Lead

Chair

Publication Details

Country
Flag of Senegal Senegal
Approaches
  • Reform & Advisory Support
  • Research
Themes
  • Intergovernmental and Horizontal Collaboration
  • Property Identification
  • Property Valuation
Publication Status
Upcoming

Camille Barras

Policy Lead

Contact

Camille Barras is the Policy Lead for the Local Government Revenue Initiative (LoGRI). Her areas of work and interest encompass public governance and administration, subnational governance, intergovernmental relations and state-society relations – and their connection with taxation. She is also interested in questions related to the effectiveness and evolution of international development as a field, in evidence generation and uptake as well as in research methods (quantitative, mixed, evaluation). She completed, in 2023, a PhD at the University of Cambridge, investigating the effects of decentralization on political attitudes and behaviours, and holds academic qualifications in political science, public policy and law. Previously, she worked during seven years at the intersection of practice and research, mainly in the international development sector across a variety of organizations and projects in West/North Africa, South/East Asia and Europe. Among others, she worked for a local governance project at UNDP, was a project manager for impact evaluations at the Center for Evaluation and Development and consulted for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.

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Colette Nyirakamana

Research Lead

Contact

Dr. Colette Nyirakamana is Research Lead for the LoGRI program, and Senior Research Associate at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. Prior to joining LoGRI, Colette worked as program lead of the African Property Tax Initiative  (APTI) at the International Centre for Tax and Development, where she was in charge of supporting APTI-funded researchers, leading research projects, engaging with key stakeholders and advising governments in the design of property tax reform efforts. Her research focuses on local finances with particular emphasis on the institutional and political factors that create favourable and unfavourable conditions for effective revenue mobilization. She holds a doctoral degree in Comparative Public Policy from McMaster University in Canada

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Wilson Prichard

Chair

Contact

Dr Wilson Prichard is an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and Department of Political Science, a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, Executive Director of the ICTD and Chair of the LoGRI program. His research focuses on the political economy of tax reform in lower-income countries and the relationship between taxation and citizen demands for improved governance in Sub-Saharan Africa, with a particular focus on sub-Saharan Africa.  He is the authors of Taxation, Responsiveness and Accountability in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Dynamics of Tax Bargaining (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Taxing Africa: Coercion, Reform and Development (Zed Press, 2018) and Innovations in Tax Compliance: Building Trust, Navigating Politics and Tailoring Reform (World Bank, 2022), along with a range of academic articles.

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