Resiliency and Change in Common Property Regimes in West Africa: The Case of the Tongo in the Gambia, Guinea and Sierra Leone

Abstract

"The commons in the West African Sahel are valuable though often ecologically threatened sources of food and fiber products for rural and urban populations. Rural communities in many parts of the Sahel create new rules and conventions to define rights of access and sustainable uses to particularly valuable resources found within the commons. Often these communities construct these covenants on the foundations of traditional common property regimes. This case study describes the flexible and constantly evolving 'tongo' common property regime recently studied in field research in western Senegambia, Upper and Middle Guinea, and coastal Sierra Leone.

"Sixteenth century Portugese explorers and English colonial administrators describe in considerable detail the 'tongo' restrictions and sanctions, yet until recently, few development practitioners recognized the existence of this regime in West Africa. Known as the 'sawei' in Mende societies of Sierra Leone, the 'tongo' is a set of prohibitions devised and enforced by community institutions to regulate access at certain times of the year to particularly valuable resources found both within the commons and on individually appropriated lands. The restrictions often determine the dates and conditions of access by the community-at-large to specific tree species, fishing grounds, grazing lands, sacred forests, and thatch collecting areas. This paper suggests that development projects seeking to construct new forms of collective resource use arrangements can incorporate into project design many of the features of the 'tongo' by paying particular attention to the way in which community institutions define and enforce rules of access. These lessons can be usefully employed by project personnel and policy makers to facilitate the emergence of new forms of community controlled protected areas."