Social mechanisms of urban plot pricing in the small town of Tohoun (Togo)

Abstract The dynamism of the economy in African cities has led people to put on the market all the goods and possessions they have, including land. However, once very inalienable and imbued with sociocultural norms, the land is exchanged and sold today, similar to other goods on the market. However, unlike other goods where the fixing of the price responds to the law of supply and demand, that of the earth remains singular and obeys various logics for its determination. The small town of Tohoun in Togo does not escape the varied conditions for fixing the price of land. This article aims to understand the social effect of the mechanisms for fixing the prices of plots through documentation, interviews with 23 resource persons and questionnaire surveys conducted with 48 transferor and buyer households. Theories of the approach by the Hedonic Price Method (MPH) of S. Rosen and the theory on the land market, reflecting the collective representations of Maurice Halbwachs, were mobilized to confront the results. The results showed that the prices of plots vary for several reasons, most of which are inserted in social relations. Urban plot prices are not set on the basis of the organization of society as a market, culminating in the economic profitability of financial and regal structures, but rather on the basis of social privileges in small and medium-sized towns.