The Concept of Compensation for Expropriated Real Properties and Livelihood Restoration of the Affected Persons. A Case Study Analysis of Batsinda Resettlement in Kigali, Rwanda

Throughout the past two decades, Rwanda like many other African developing countries has witnessed many implementations of projects involving expropriation of land in course of its urban land rapid transformation. Previous studies on in-kind compensation to the property owners in Kigali have revealed that residents in the areas that are envisaged for expropriation in the near future doubt the advantages of this form of compensation. Thus the Government of Rwanda has recently embraced in-kind compensation mode to solve impoverishment problem which has been persistently resulting from monetary compensation in the previous projects. Therefore this paper explores the effectiveness of this newly adopted mode of compensation toward restoration of the livelihood of the affected people. It was evaluated in terms of four key aspects which are land tenure security, housing condition, employment status, and quality of the restored community assets. Structured interviews, self-administered questionnaires, field observation and document review are the methods used to collect both primary and secondary data for this study. During this study, 78% of the participants were aged from 35 years up to 45 years while 89% were male and 11% were female taking into consideration gender aspect. According to land ownership status, all the interviewed Batsinda Settlement residents were the land owners in the Settlement, which gives hope that responses received from property owners are correct enough.The findings of this study revealed that in-kind compensation mode has been effective and successful in delivering some of the desired output .On the other hand, some undesirable outcomes were realized in terms of the dissatisfying replacement house size, market facilities provided and unsuccessful employment restoration in post relocation. This failure was mainly a result of poor planning reflected in the lack of resettlement framework in Kigali, low values of the expropriated properties, poor land valuation practice and suitable resettlement space unavailability. Results also show that 250 houses were constructed on the resettlement site to host the relocated people, but among 336 households who were supposed to relocate only 123 accepted the replacement houses as in-kind compensation while others opted for monetary compensation. Based on the results presented and discussed this study concludes that through the livelihood restoration strategies associated with in-kind compensation, this mode of compensation can improve the livelihood of Project Affected People(PAP) to the extent of increasing land tenure security, improving housing condition and improving access to infrastructures in post relocation. It is therefore recommended that on-site resettlement should be considered as an alternative way of resettling Project Affected People (PAP). Keywords: Resettlement, Compensation, Livelihood Restoration, Expropriated Real Properties.