Land Conflicts as Governance Mechanisms: Entrepreneurship, Institutional Fragmentation, and Urban Sustainability in the Munua Peri-Urban Corridor, Lubumbashi (DRC)

This study examines how three interconnected mechanisms—rapid peri-urbanisation, the land entrepreneurship-driven commercialisation of land, and fragmented, hybrid land governance—interact in generating land conflicts and shaping urban development trajectories in the Munua peri-urban corridor in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo. A mixed-methods approach was employed, combining a household survey (n = 316), semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, participatory workshops, field observations and spatial analysis. The results indicate that the most frequently reported conflict mechanisms are land fraud (86.7%), illegal land sales (75.0%) and double allocation (50.0%). Socio-demographic pressure (43.99%) and land ownership disputes (40.82%) were identified as the main structural drivers of conflict. Exposure to land conflicts was significantly associated with household income (χ2 = 32.84, p < 0.001): low-income households reported substantially higher exposure levels than high-income households. Conflict exposure was also strongly associated with tenure insecurity, affecting 84.1% of conflict-affected households compared to 41.3% of households not affected by conflict. The findings indicate that land conflicts operate as active mechanisms through which authority, legitimacy and access to land are negotiated under conditions of legal pluralism and rapid urbanisation, not merely consequences of governance failure. The study argues that land conflicts function as constitutive elements of hybrid peri-urban governance systems, with significant implications for urban sustainability and land management in rapidly urbanising African cities.