Land has always had and will always have value. A fatal value, sometimes. And, it will never be easy for an idividu who is foreign to him to get his hands on it, to appropriate it, without meeting later the most deadly turmoil. Hence, the need for regulations that require owners and purchasers of land, urban or agricultural, to comply with the rules governing the sale and purchase. Where is Togo in land policy? The situation is somewhere between disorder and anarchy. Sometimes with the sponsorship of the officials themselves. Two questions arise: do we want to continue to defend the right of the first occupant of the land as has been customary in our circles since the dawn of time? Or, rather, to consider rural land no longer as private property, but as a common good whose management must be subject to state control? Or an option in between? Let's face it, whatever the case, the presence of the state is indispensable. But then a serious, honest and impartial state, which respects its own laws, if we want the disarray linked to expropriation and monopolization to lead, tomorrow, to confrontations? The practices that take place in the country, especially in the countryside, in terms of the transfer and acquisition of land constitute a veritable powder pear, that is to say a latent bomb. How long will the state be absent?

The news, true or false, has spread like wildfire: the Chinese are in our countryside where they buy the arable land. The sale (?) of our land to the Chinese? Is that the agricultural component of the NDP? While we have, in the same countryside, valid arms to exploit these lands, provided that the State replaces, in the hands of the candidates for the peasantry, the vediéval dabas by tractors of our century. In this regard, what have become of the assistant agricultural engineers trained over the decades by the INFA of Tové? It is pure deception, governance by deception, to take decisions in councils of ministers without these being followed by a substantial budget that finances them and gives them shape on the ground. Competition for access to arable land remains fierce, amplified by the emergence of nouveau riches who seek to ensure the transfer of land to their offspring. And as rural landowners are increasingly poor,  impoverished by poor governance, they do not hesitate to sell, at a ridiculous price, their land, sometimes to the chagrin of their children and families.
It was up to the state to take stock of the consequences that could arise within the communities in relation to the sale of land. Understood that these transactions, often illegal, could lead to the proliferation of land disputes that are already simmering in many places and that could constitute a real threat to social cohesion in the future. Should we remember that land conflicts, very often violent and bloody, are the most difficult to resolve? It is reported that land proceedings constitute the bulk of litigation in most local and regional courts, although they (these courts) do not always have sufficient staff for this purpose. So, what is the Togolese state doing to overcome these problems that are in realities a time bomb? To deal with the most pressing and put the matter in order, a Ministry of Land Ownership and Rural Land Development would have been preferable to the recently created Ministry  of Rural Roads!

The NDP could have been the result of national consultations involving the populations, in their communities. It was important to take into account several customary practices during the design phase of the programme by showing in advance to these rural populations, landowners, the possible repercussions on their environment for the benefit of development, both local and national. The design of the NDP was an opportunity. Has an attempt been made to answer these two key questions: what is the appropriate land tenure for use in our different localities? And, what are the probable effects of this or that project that the State could install there within the framework of the NDP? It has been preferred, as it seems, a propaganda in the capital, without a sociological study on the ground, without a vast consultation that prepares the rural world for the possible impact of the plan on the land ownership governed for the most part, by customary law.

The reality, following the observation, and the testimonies, is chilling in the back. Sometimes it is breathtaking: individuals, civilian and military, just with the outfit and status of "member of UNIR" will sow panic in the villages, using the passes to dispossess the landowners, against a few meager banknotes. Sometimes, there is consent of the frightened sellers (?) sometimes the use of scarecrows in case of resistance. There will come a time when, in the context of the depletion of land reserves and the economic crisis with the return to their villages of origin of urban natives, the new candidates for working the land will reproach their elders for having sold off the family patrimony. This will not fail to provoke violent, unappeaseable disputes. And when the transactions are going to concern foreign buyers (coming from another region of the country or a third country) these conflicts can quickly take on a political dimension.
Disputes can arise long after the initial transaction, especially during generation renewal in sellers' family groups. Because young people will question the transfers of the past and will not want to be bound by the arrangements made by the previous generation. It can also lead to strong intra-family and inter-generational tensions when the legitimacy of the transfer or the legitimacy of the seller are disputed. It should not be forgotten that some post-inheritance disputes thus appear between mature young people and the "overseers of the family land (uncle or brother of the deceased father) who had custody of the inheritance, when the heir who has come of age or returns from migration considers that the supervisor has improperly sold a large part of the earth. This results in a brutal uprooting of the land transferred or, where compromised, a reinterpretation of sales such as guarantees or leasebacks. In such a dynamic, the socio-economic context plays a major role. But it turns out that this context, in our country is decreasing, goes from bad to worse.

It is up to the State to prevent. Through widely disseminated laws. Members of Parliament exist for this kind of work. It is up to them to explain all the facets of these laws, including leases, inheritance, privatization, land registration, property taxes, local authorities, land use planning ... and other land transaction laws including transfers of property and mortgages. Perhaps these laws exist but never popularized, by design, thus giving free rein to land grabbing by the new rich with the implicit complicity of the officials in charge of implimenting these laws. Have we not seen cases where land expropriated to serve as administrative reserves has been resold or built by powerful people, untouchables?
What is more embarrassing is when thousands of hectares of arable land are sold to foreign farmers, including Chinese. The State, necessarily, is informed of the conditions of transfer of these lands? Are they the best, these conditions, to the benefit of the communities concerned for the future? It seems to us that renting must be the dominant mode of commercial access to these lands; it must (leasing) be privileged to the detriment of the sale which is perceived as a way of mortgaging for life the land patrimony of the family or the indigenous community. . It is a question of putting in place at the national level rules defining the distribution of property rights over land, the modalities of allocation of rights of use, control and transfer as well as the corresponding responsibilities and limitations. All in all, a land tenure system that determines who can use which land for how long and under what conditions, naturally taking into account the customary structures in place, without any ambiguity or attitude that favors a buyer just because of his acquaintances with the administrative authorities of the locality, prefects, chiefs canton.
The security of land rights acquired at ridiculous prices by both Chinese farmers and the privileged in power, our nouveau riches, must not result in the total loss of rights held from generation to generation by indigenous people. The situation as told or experienced in our prefectures is alarming. The State cannot indulge in a posture of contemplation or complicity, in the same poverty of judgment, in the face of these sources of conflict in gestation that is the question of land in Togo, nagging, even existential.