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Some Issues of Theory in the Study of Tenure Relations in African Agriculture
Abstract
Prolegomenon
What has become known as ‘the African agrarian crisis’ is an extremely complex phenomenon. This much is clear from the fact that, despite the very considerable amount of literature which has been accumulated on the subject (Berry, 1984), there is still very little agreement as to its precise nature and dimensions and even less certainty on how to resolve it in the context of national level policies, plans and programmes. What this must mean, inter alia , is that explanations cannot be sought simply in pithy epigrams drawn from grand theories and hastily assembled micro-level data bases.
... Of course, some have contended that "Africa's history does not begin with colonialism and its legacy" and that political organization in Africa, such as kingdoms, influenced varying forms of political violence before colonial occupation (Besley and Reynal-Querol 2014: 2). Since land conflicts existed before colonial occupation (Keller 2014), the exact foundations for the ongoing land problems requires close examinations of local contexts and shifts in property rights that took place during colonization (Haugerud 1989;Kanogo 1987;Okoth-Ogendo 1989). ...
... 15 During colonization, land in Kenya considered unoccupied by the British settlers was declared Crown land, i.e. land on which the Commissioner acted on behalf of the Queen of England (Crown Lands Ordinace of 1902), as well as Trust Land (Kanogo 1987;Okoth-Ogendo 1989) 3 . Access to and control over land thus shifted from earlier forms of social ownership to "market-oriented" or private ownership systems. ...
... In fact, "by 1939, most of the remaining high potential land remained as crown land under the direct control of the governor, and native areas, recategorized as 'trust lands', were under the control of land boards accountable to the governor" (Klopp 2000: 15). Although some of the new land tenure practices were aimed at containing dissent from pressure groups such as the Mau Mau anticolonial struggle movement (Kanogo 1987), land rights shifted from "traditional" institutions of ownership to private ownership, thus providing individuals and groups of individuals with powers for exclusive appropriation and/or control over land and related resources (Boone 2011;Haugerud 1989;Okoth-Ogendo 1989). ...
Land governance continues to be a topic of high interest within policy and academic circles. The manner in which land institutions should (or should not) go about reforming national land policies has been a highly contested topic given the complex and multilayered nature of land-related conflicts. The purpose of this literature review is to identify and discuss how, why, and by whom land conflicts are mobilized to generate tension, conflict, and violence over land in Kenya. The article argues that, in addition to “global land rush” narratives, the structure of politics is a key organizing element of land conflict in Kenya. This is because politics define the kinds of relationships people have with land, including the institutions that prescribe, manage, and oversee land rights. This literature review contributes more broadly to address land conflict and ethno-political violence in Kenya.
... The introduction of colonial rule in both settler and non-settlers colonies in Africa did not only lead to the introduction of a foreign system of land tenure, but it fundamentally altered the way Africans think and relate to land as illustrated below. Most of, if not all, the policy and administrative changes introduced through colonialism were tailored to protect and advance the interests of the minority European settlers, with little or no regard to the local African people who were, directly and indirectly, turned into tenants of the imperial Crowns, on their mother's land (Okoth-Ogendo, 1989). Given the humiliation and violence to which Africans were subjected during colonialism, when most African countries became independent, there was great expectation that the nationalist leaders, who fought for the land against foreign occupation, would not only reconstruct the agrarian structure, but also remove the distortions which colonialism introduced around land and the economy. ...
... One of the most fundamental changes is the introduction of an entirely foreign land tenure system, based on European conception of land, and property in general. The large body of literature on land and land tenure in Africa is almost unanimous on the view that the dominant conception and approaches to land tenure and management in Africa today are largely a product of colonial construction (Okoth-Ogendo, 1989;Bassett, 1993;Agbosu, 2000;Akuffo, 2009). In the context of decolonial thinking, it is important to note that this change has always been portrayed as a positive change (for the better), since customary land tenure systems in Africa were seen as the ones responsible for blocking progress to more productive use of land (see Bassett, 1993;Peters, 2009). ...
... In this regard, a clear distinction was made between the soil (solum) and the things that grow on it; "there was a clear separation in African thought and law between the solum and any manifestation, such as crops, trees and buildings which symbolises human interaction with it" (Okoth-Ogendo, 1989: 8). This separation was not present in the Dutch-Roman conception of land where the solum was fused together "with water and air in a compact, recording the claims of individuals rather than social labour upon it" (Okoth-Ogendo, 1989). ...
... The introduction of colonial rule in both settler and non-settlers colonies in Africa did not only lead to the introduction of a foreign system of land tenure, but it fundamentally altered the way Africans think and relate to land as illustrated below. Most of, if not all, the policy and administrative changes introduced through colonialism were tailored to protect and advance the interests of the minority European settlers, with little or no regard to the local African people who were, directly and indirectly, turned into tenants of the imperial Crowns, on their mother's land (Okoth-Ogendo, 1989). Given the humiliation and violence to which Africans were subjected during colonialism, when most African countries became independent, there was great expectation that the nationalist leaders, who fought for the land against foreign occupation, would not only reconstruct the agrarian structure, but also remove the distortions which colonialism introduced around land and the economy. ...
... One of the most fundamental changes is the introduction of an entirely foreign land tenure system, based on European conception of land, and property in general. The large body of literature on land and land tenure in Africa is almost unanimous on the view that the dominant conception and approaches to land tenure and management in Africa today are largely a product of colonial construction (Okoth-Ogendo, 1989;Bassett, 1993;Agbosu, 2000;Akuffo, 2009). In the context of decolonial thinking, it is important to note that this change has always been portrayed as a positive change (for the better), since customary land tenure systems in Africa were seen as the ones responsible for blocking progress to more productive use of land (see Bassett, 1993;Peters, 2009). ...
... In this regard, a clear distinction was made between the soil (solum) and the things that grow on it; "there was a clear separation in African thought and law between the solum and any manifestation, such as crops, trees and buildings which symbolises human interaction with it" (Okoth-Ogendo, 1989: 8). This separation was not present in the Dutch-Roman conception of land where the solum was fused together "with water and air in a compact, recording the claims of individuals rather than social labour upon it" (Okoth-Ogendo, 1989). ...
Debates on decolonisation have featured prominently, particularly in South Africa, starting from 2014. Although the concept of decolonisation encompasses a wide range of ideas, there is a general sense that decolonisation is intended to draw attention to the fact that the dominant modes of thinking and production of knowledge across Africa are defined and dominated by a Western world view. In this debate, it is often argued that this represents the failure to fully decolonise the continent, even if colonial occupation ended 60 years ago in most countries. In this article, I argue that decolonisation project in Africa has remained incomplete and there are different manifestations of this. Two examples from the land and the economy are used to illustrate the unfinished project of the decolonising Africa. By arguing that decolonisation has remained incomplete, the paper is not arguing that there has been no attempt to decolonise; but that these efforts have not been radical enough to see the project to its logical conclusion. This is partly because the project of decolonisation was narrowly framed within the nationalist project, which tended to equate decolonisation with political liberation.
... In rural China, the assumed necessity to 'civilize,' foster 'progress' and 'develop' the 'backward', 'conservative' western regions (Yeh, O'Brien and Ye et al., 2013) became the People's Republic of China (PRC)'s primary concern after de-collectivization and the shift to a market economy in the 1980s (Fischer, 2008;Gruschke, 2012;Heilmann and Perry, 2011;Roche and Hillman, 2017;Topgyal, 2011;Yeh et al., 2017). Similarly, in Kenya, a long history of interventions in pastoral institutions, based on similarly pejorative assumptions, have attempted to convert pastoral land use to commercial livestock production, to sedentarize populations and to impose regulatory grazing management (Anderson, 2002;Mwangi, 2007;Mwangi and Ostrom, 2009;Okoth-Ogendo, 1986, 1989Unks, 2022;Waller, 2012). ...
... Similarly, anthropological perspectives have pointed to the importance of how shifting systems of patronage and values under colonial and post-colonial regimes became intertwined with rules, norms and values of land (Behnke, 2018;Galaty, 1981). These new rules and norms were followed by the establishment of 'group ranches' (GRs) which established collectively titled land, granted legal authority to elected officials and established new rules and norms of internal range management (Mwangi, 2007;Mwangi and Ostrom, 2009;Rutten 1992) that were given precedence over previous 'customary' institutions (Okoth-Ogendo, 1989). Structural adjustment, constitutional reforms, wildlife conservation reforms and market-based conservation have all had cascading implications for rangeland institutions (Unks, 2022). ...
... More than three decades ago, Hastings Okoth-Ogendo (1989: 7) argued that it is pointless explaining African indigenous land laws from an occidental epistemic that directs enquiries into 'whether or not African social systems recognise institutions of ownership; and if they do, who in society-the chief, the family, the clan, or the lineage-is the repository of that ownership'. As an alternative, Okoth-Ogendo (1989;2008) suggests grappling with the onto-ethical meaning of land and its relational agency if pre-colonial land laws-that remain in practice across the continent's communal landholdings-are to be understood. Said differently, Okoth-Ogendo is calling for meta ethical explorations that encompass characteristics of Coulthard's (2014) grounded normativity, Byrd et al.'s (2018) grounded relationality, and Escobar's (2019) re-earthing planning praxis, even if Okoth-Ogendo abstains from explicitly referring to these frameworks. ...
... But environmental resources are not understood from an occidental extractivist standpoint. Rather, these resources are sustained and cared for by all, since the governance of communal landholdings is segmented both vertically and horizontally, even if traditional leaders are endowed with the overall responsibility of looking after peoples and lands (Okoth-Ogendo, 1989;2008). Access to land, in turn, is 'essentially a function of membership in the family, clan, lineage or wider community, and it is available to any individual on account of that membership' (Okoth-Ogendo, 2008: 100). ...
Decoloniality—which encompasses conceptual frameworks of grounded normativity, grounded relationality, re-earthing, and meta ethical enquiries—yields radically different opportunities for planning theory: opportunities that are explicitly de-linked from occidental systems of thought. Yet, some planning scholars question decoloniality’s transferability into practice. The aim of this article is to demonstrate decoloniality’s political and spatial outcomes from the vantagepoint of one geopolitical region by exploring communal landholdings in southern Africa where traditional leaders remain custodians of lands, cultures, languages, and nonhuman actants, and where residents continue to engage with pre-colonial land laws. Findings reveal not only optimistic possibilities but also sobering concerns.
... Over three decades ago, Okoth-Ogendo (1989: 7) argued that it is futile to explain African indigenous land laws from a Western epistemic that directs enquiry into "whether or not African social systems recognise institutions of ownership; and if they do, who in society -the chief, the family, the clan, or the lineage -is the repository of that ownership". Instead, Okoth-Ogendo (1989; as well as Winkler and Duminy (2016) suggest that planners explore the meaning and nature of property in African onto-epistemologies, by asking meta ethical questions such as, for example: What is the meaning and nature of property in land in African socio-political orders? For Okoth-Ogendo (2008), the meaning and nature of property in African onto-epistemologies is derived not only from how individuals or groups relate to a physical place, but also from how individuals relate to all members of a community and vice versa. ...
... Okoth- Ogendo's (1989; precolonial land-tenure thesis is supported by anthropological and historical evidence found in the former Transkei (Hunter, 1936;Hammond-Tooke, 1968;Peires, 1982;Soga, 2013). ...
‘The land question’ in South African national politics continues to dominate partypolitical battles. However, most of these battles refrain from engaging with ‘communal’ landholdings that are under the custodianship of traditional leaders. Of further concern, the legislation not only remains ambiguous about traditional leaders’ land administration functions and powers, but it is also conceptualised within Western frameworks. Ambiguity and Western centricity, in turn, hinder planning efforts and municipal service delivery in South Africa’s rural regions, while residents continue to live without tenure security and enhanced socio-economic prospects. By focusing on ‘communal land’, this article revisits African indigenous land laws, in order to gain a deeper understanding of contemporary tenure practices on ‘communal’ landholdings. The article identifies some of the planning complexities found in former Transkei. Possible recommendations include following an area-based approach to planning where community property associations (or similar structures) are explored with residents of some ‘communal’ landholdings, while traditional leadership structures are explored in other contexts. All role players should thus have equal decision-making powers over local land administration and development.
... What this implies is that someone can hold the allodial title in land, another can hold the customary freehold and yet another can have a lease or a licence or any other kind of tenancy to the same piece of land. As noted by Bentsi-Enchill (1964), Okoth-Ogendo (1989) as well as Manuh et al. (1997), the existence of various rights and interests in land indicate that land rights and the concept of ownership may be more accurately understood as a complex system of interlocking rights and interests. In their study of forms of land ownership granted women in the Upper East Region, outline the presence of different interests in land which can be vested in different persons at the same time. ...
... A significant contestation in current policy discourses is between those who describe multiple claims in land as a bundle of rights that are hierarchically ordered, in which some are primary and some secondary, and others who, while arguing that there are multiple claims, reject the core distinction between primary and secondary claims and their hierarchical ordering. The latter authors -such as Lavigne-Delville et al. (2001), Moore and Vaughan (1994) and Okoth-Ogendo (1989) stress instead the negotiated, dynamic and fluid nature of tenure relations and tenure claims and treat their socially embedded nature in radically different ways. ...
... Although increased commercialisation and land scarcity may have provoked private claims on land, evidence show[s] that … even in areas of commercial agriculture where there is evidence of land markets, the landholding systems remain tightly bound up with kinship institutions. (Yngstrom 2002, 24) Those critical of the evolutionary theory of property rights argue that although customary tenure relations and institutions are not static, their evolution does not amount to a linear process as suggested by the proponents of this theory (see Okoth-Ogendo 1989). For instance, Chanock (1991) argues that the evolution of customary tenure relations in Africa is less clear-cut, and often involves a gradual shift to a hybrid situation where there is a combination of features of contractual arrangements and traditional channels, which are still evident today. ...
... But this is what is often confused with selling in the European sense of transferring ownership from one party to another. Ownership understood in this sense can lead (and has led) to serious misunderstanding of customary land relations in Africa (Okoth-Ogendo 1989). ...
This paper examines the growing trend of monetarised transactions of customary land in Zambia, and the impact of these dealings on customary land practices and norms. While transactions of customary land involving money are not a new phenomenon in many parts of Africa, including Zambia, the growing demand for land, especially in areas where land shortages are emerging, has led to a steady growth in these transactions, with the practice becoming more widespread. In the Zambian context, this is directly linked to the policy that allows customary land to be converted into leasehold tenure. Local elites, urban dwellers, and foreign investors are taking this opportunity to acquire customary land which they then convert to leasehold tenure. However, while these dealings have some features of a conventional market, they are, at the same time, bound up in local customary land norms. Although such transactions have been reported widely in the literature, there has been little analysis of their nature and the impact this is having on traditional land practices and norms. Drawing mainly from qualitative data, this paper examines the nature of these transactions and the effects they are having on customary land relations, practices and norms.
... According to Kanogo and Ogendo, land in Kenya perceived as unoccupied by British settlers was designated as Crown land, indicating territory where the Commissioner acted on behalf of the Queen of England, as stipulated by the Crown Lands Ordinance of 1902. Additionally, such land was categorized as Trust Land, as noted by Kanogo (1987) andOkoth Ogendo (1989). The most fertile and climatically favourable portions of these lands were designated as the White Highlands, reserved specifically for European settlement and agricultural activities. ...
Ethnic conflicts have increased across the globe, and especially after the Cold war; and indeed affected various countries in Europe, Africa, Asia and America. In most of these cases, it has been triggered by struggles for the meagre resources and domination of political power. In Africa, studies on ethnic conflicts have indicated a strong interplay between ethnicity and the colonial phenomenon. This article endeavours to connect the intermittent political violence in Uasin Gishu, Kenya, within the purview of the colonial phenomenon particularly, when the violence was viewed historically as a process and not an event. It hypothesizes that the violent subterfuge of ethnic communities in Uasin Gishu and other portions of the rift valley were the result of the despair and fear perceived by native communities as a result of presumed economic and political setbacks during the colonial era. To this end, the initial research study was guided by three theories, namely: Primordialism, instrumentalism and relative deprivation theories which reinforced each other as the lens through which to make sense of the connection between colonialism and the said intermittent political violence. The study is based on a research project that employed the historical method from the dual perspectives of interpretivism philosophical outlook and qualitative approach. The main submission, in this research article, is that the coming and settlement of the colonialists led to the growth of toxic ethnic relations within the Rift valley region that were initially non-existent. This situation was further exacerbated after independence (1963), as the political elites became the new drivers of the vice
... Access to housing is used to refer to a dynamic understanding of how and why people occupy housing (i.e. own, rent, own and rent, family house, etc) and the kin (social) relations associated with its use and control (Hulse, 2008;Okoth-Ogendo, 1989). I hold that access to housing is a better analytical category than housing tenure because renting and owner occupier housing are not exclusive categories, and can co-exist, and that additional categories should be identified. ...
Most international and local (South African) research on housing examine housing tenure in terms of static categories, – i.e. does someone own or rent their accommodation – without capturing either the dynamics of how people occupy housing or the complexities that arise when, for example, someone might rent accommodation while owning a house elsewhere. Most censuses and surveys simply ask whether the household living in a sampled house (or apartment, etc) currently rents or owns that house. I find access to housing to be a better analytical category than tenure arguing that renting and owner occupier housing are not exclusive categories, and can co-exist, and that additional categories should be identified. This dissertation used the Cape Area Panel Study and found that young people’s access to housing was explained through five categories; ownership, renting, renting and ownership, shared accommodation, and family houses.
This study finds that most young people in Cape Town had access to housing mainly through family houses way into their late twenties, a situation which did not fit neatly within the mainstream understanding of housing tenure defined either by ownership or rental accommodation. Their access to accommodation varied by income. Those with lower and higher earnings were highly associated with ownership than the middle income earning group while rental was directly related to earnings. Most young people were in houses with co-resident parents and other kin while their shift to independent housing occurred at a very slow rate with age and across gender and race.
Access to housing was also used to trace young people’s housing ‘paths’, i.e. their changing access to accommodation as they grow older. Internationally, little attention has been paid to young people’s housing paths and no such studies have been done in Africa. This study found that most young people in Cape Town followed inconsistent housing paths mainly due to unstable incomes and strongly kinship networks encouraged extended family systems. I defined a consistent housing path as a shift from a family house to rental and/or owner occupier housing. Inconsistent housing paths appeared in any alternative order, i.e. first-time owners who later moved into family housing. In addition, there was an insignificant marginal effect of HIV-AIDS affectedness on young people’s access to housing.
Overall, this dissertation makes three main contributions to the existing body of literature. Firstly, this is the first systematic study to investigate a full range of housing occupancy through access to housing in view of the inadequate and legalistic binary understanding of tenure. Secondly, it is the first evidence of a systematic measure of young people’s housing paths in Africa and highlights that kinship, structural conditions (i.e. employment, family background), human agency (individual choices) and social factors (i.e. HIV-AIDS) explained their shifts to independent housing. Lastly, this study also makes a methodological contribution for a more nuanced examination of access to housing through a dynamic approach - the use of panel data.
... Many GRs were not designed to reflect the need for seasonal access to ecologically variable resources, and those that did include seasonal forage and water access considerations did not account for required mobility during droughts (Campbell 1981;Coldham 1982;Rutten 1992;Rutten 2008;Waller 2012). Collective GR land tenure reconfigured access rights and undermined the socio-cultural basis of pastoralists' mobile production strategies (Okoth-Ogendo 1986;Okoth-Ogendo 1989). As such, GRs constrained the flexibility of historical resource management institutions and social relations that previously mediated responses to ecological variability, leading to failure of collective management (Mwangi 2006;2007a;2007b;Ostrom 2009a, 2009b). ...
In East Africa, pastoralist systems are undergoing rapid transformation due to land enclosures, benefit distributions associated with new land uses, shifting social relations, and changing authority and governance structures. We apply a critical analysis of the institutions that mediate access and benefits across a complex mosaic of property relations within Ilkisongo Maasai pastoralist land in southern Kenya. Our analysis elucidates how global and national influences have interacted with shifting dynamics of socio-cultural norms and rules regarding access to create new benefit pathways, cascading patterns of accumulation and social differentiation, and diffuse institutional controls over land.
... On the other hand, the modern African state's claim over land is rooted in the formal rules, including the constitution and international law, that accords territorial sovereignty to incumbent states. Thus, when traditional authorities are laying claim to or contesting new rules, policies, and structures over customary land administration, they appeal to the social practice and cultural norms through which land has been governed and shared in the past (Okoth-Ogendo 1989). Therefore, customary land in Africa is an arena where different types of claims converge, drawing from different sources to legitimise the claims. ...
This open access book offers unique in-depth, comprehensive, and comparative analyses of the motivations, context, and outcomes of recent land reforms in Africa. Whereas a considerable number of land reforms have been carried out by African governments since the 1990s, no systematic analysis on their meaning has so far been conducted. In the age of land reform, Africa has seen drastic rural changes. Analysing the relationship between those reforms and change, the chapters in this book reveal not only their socio-economic outcomes, such as accelerated marketisation of land, but also their political outcomes, which have often been contrasting. Countries such as Rwanda and Mozambique have utilised land reform to strengthen state control over land, but other countries, such as Ghana and Zambia, have seen the rise in power of traditional chiefs in managing the land. The comparative perspective of this book clarifies new features of African social changes, which are carefully investigated by area experts. Providing new perspectives on recent land reform, this book will have a considerable impact on scholars as well as policymakers.
... Les anthropologues qui étudient la propriété commune chez les autochtones ont mis en évidence la nécessité de conceptualiser la « propriété » comme une relation entre personnes plutôt que comme une relation entre personne et objets (Gluckman 1965, Tanner 1986, Okoth-Ogendo 1989. En reconnaissant que la propriété est avant tout une institution sociale, ils affirment que « la propriété est mieux comprise non comme un donné, mais comme un processus ou un résultat des pratiques sociales et écologiques » (Scott 1991 : 35). ...
... On the other hand, the modern African state's claim over land is rooted in the formal rules, including the constitution and international law, that accords territorial sovereignty to incumbent states. Thus, when traditional authorities are laying claim to or contesting new rules, policies, and structures over customary land administration, they appeal to the social practice and cultural norms through which land has been governed and shared in the past (Okoth-Ogendo 1989). Therefore, customary land in Africa is an arena where different types of claims converge, drawing from different sources to legitimise the claims. ...
This chapter looks at the land policyLandpolicy reform challenges in Africa, focusing on the struggle between the state and traditional leadersTraditional- leaders over the control of customary landCustomary- land. The governanceGovernance of customary landCustomary- land is one of the most contentious land issues in Africa. As many African governments seek to reform land policiesLandpolicy in order to respond to the challenges of population growth and urbanisation leading to the increasing demand for land, the proposed reforms are often challenged by traditional leadersTraditional- leaders who see the reforms as a ploy to undermine their authority over customary landCustomary- land. It is argued in this chapter that, while the state sometimes attempts to co-opt traditional leadersTraditional- leaders into cooperating with it, this alliance often does not hold for long, especially when traditional leadersTraditional- leaders sense that their interests are being undermined by proposed land policyLandpolicy reforms. Drawing from the Zambian experience, the chapter shows that although the state, as a sovereign entity, has the authority over all land under its territory, the situation is complicated by the fact that traditional leadersTraditional- leaders also assert authority over customary landCustomary- land. This situation sometimes leads to contestations that often frustrate the formulation and implementation of land policyLandpolicy reforms.
... This is not possible in the case of communal land and thus results in a weak permit-based entitlement that is not secure (Pienaar, 2013: 21). Okoth-Ogendo (1989) states that, in indigenous tenure, the right of an individual or group to access land is secure so long as the land is productively used. Therefore, one can consider this access to land as an individual real right under the system. ...
... Decades after colonisation, Africa still struggle with the imprints of colonial governments and their policies. As Okoth-Ogendo notes, parallels with colonial agendas still exist in land ownership in Africa (Okoth-Ogendo, 1989). In Zimbabwe, communal areas still reflect colonial legacies. ...
... As a result, varieties of literature have emerged from various disciplinary perspectives, especially a large volume of grey (policy) literature. Many of these literature diagnoses of SSA land issues have taken livelihood, economic and sociological perspectives to dissecting the issues they investigated (see Okoth-Ogendo, 1989;Shipton and Goheen, 1992;Deininger and Binswanger, 1999;Whitehead and Tsikata, 2003;Chigbu, 2015;Ondetti, 2016;Chigbu, 2019a). Some critical issues have emerged from them, including that SSA women's land tenure issues are undergoing significant changes (Asiama, 1997), and that the women are a heterogeneous group that experience land tenure differently Cross-cultural studies have shown that those cultures where "assertive" and "egoistic" male behaviour are strongly nurtured are where women suffer the most humiliation or dehumanisation in the hands of male-power (Chodorow, 1971;Kaltwasser et al., 2017). ...
A typical character of land tenure or property systems in sub-Saharan Africa is that the systems exclude women (implicitly and explicitly). That is why the discourse on women and land tenure remains a burgeoning policy debate in sub-Saharan Africa. This study is relevant for land policy (and land governance) in sub-Saharan Africa because it evokes the minority voices of women in the land and gender discourse in sub-Saharan Africa. The study dissects, anatomically, female landlessness by probing why women still do not enjoy equal land rights today, and what must be done (policy-wise) to unchain women from their state of landlessness. By way of methodology, the study reviews relevant literature on the historical dimension of womenös access to property rights. It is an explorative study based on two e-Focus Group Discussions conducted on two different online platforms to enable the capture of more expert knowledge on the subject of customary land tenure, gender and womenös land rights in (and on) sub-Saharan Africa. The findings exposed three pillars of womenös landlessness in sub-Saharan Africa, including an analysis of the stages of male power that cripple womenös capacity to own or have access to land. The study identified and explained the nature of the contributions of different stages of male powers-including linguistic power, son power, husband power, and father power-to womenös landlessness. It shows how these powers form the elements of male dominance which interact over a life course to cripple womenös physical and psychological strength within their social spaces (which usually results into socio-political and economic disempowerments). As a key output, the study produced a policy pathway to neutralising the pillars of womenös landlessness.
... Another important factor that influences the land tenure is the type of socio-political organisation of the societies. There is an important relationship between the authority structures and the allocation of access to resources (Okoth-Ogendo, 1989). In Africa there are two broad social and political organisational structures. ...
Land reforms for addressing economic issues are required to conform to equity, socio-cultural and other landa governance concerns. This article reviews customary/communal tenure, and land reform mechanisms for optimising economic and social outcomes for countries where this type of tenure predominates. The experiences of two land groups, the Orogwangin and the Polulve Mahevie, that have engaged with the group incorporation mechanism of addressing customary communal tenure in Papua New Guinea are described and discussed. It was found that these narrow legal reform mechanisms distort customary/communal practices, forcing conflicts and subsequent subdivisions of groups in some instances. The lack of capacity of the state institutions to service the new requirements for maintaining the recording of group characteristics is notable as well. Vulnerable groups are left to negotiate with powerful business entities for appropriate terms and compensation for use of their land.
... 21 In order to generalise the institutional context, we take our point of departure from Hastings Okoth-Ogendo's conceptualisation of historical land rights in Africa as being attached to membership of a unit of production, namely the family. 22 By 'family', we refer to the group of people who work and/or depend on demarcated pieces of land, such as husband, wife and children. The unit may be larger than a nuclear family, including children of a deceased relative, elders and so on. ...
The formalisation of customary land rights in Africa, as an alternative to their privatisation, is gaining increasing attention from scholars and policy makers. In this article, we use findings from Petauke district in eastern Zambia to discuss the impact of such reforms, where so-called traditional landholding certificates were implemented by the Petauke District Land Alliance in 2010. Based on interviews with farmers, chiefs and the Alliance, we argue that the certificates have reinforced, rather than reversed, both commodification of land and increased inequality of access to land. The main reason is that the certificates provide chiefs and lineage seniors with an efficient tool to further impose institutionally induced scarcity, thereby failing to provide already vulnerable groups with more secure rights to land.
... Similar patterns can be observed not only for tenants of share contracts but for own-account farmers as well. This is because in Ghana as in many farming communities in Africa, the existence of multiple and overlapping interests in land is prevalent, and investment in tree crops may act as a means of claiming and enhancing one's land rights (Besley 1995;Sjaastad and Bromley 1997;Okoth-Ogendo 1989;Bruce 1988;Berry 1988aBerry , 1988bOtsuka et al. 1998). Therefore, farmer investment behavior needs to be understood in terms of both short-term incentive to increase yield and long-term incentive to strengthen land rights. ...
Many economists have argued that the provision of price incentives to farmers is essential for agricultural development in Africa. However, many non-price market interactions are also important in understanding the actual transactions we observe in African rural societies. Based on the data derived from fieldwork in the cocoa-growing areas in southern Ghana, this book clarifies how various non-price factors, such as indigenous land tenure systems and gender relations, influence the production incentives of individual farmers. By focusing on the institutional aspects of farmer strategies, the study argues that the role of price incentive in agricultural production needs to be reconsidered, by placing it in wider incentive structures embedded in local institutions. The study also contributes to an understanding of historical changes in Ghanaian cocoa production. In the early twentieth century, when uncultivated land was still abundant, Ghanaian smallholders rapidly expanded the area under cocoa farming. In recent years, however, there has come to be little uncultivated land available in Ghana to expand the area of cocoa production, while the present production areas have increasingly come under pressure from population growth. The study tries to clarify the way such changes have affected smallholder cocoa production in the past fifty years.
This article investigates the legal framework governing the role of traditional leaders in land use planning, through a historical gaze at the nature and authority of traditional leadership in South Africa. It is through this brief historical discussion that the influence of colonial and apartheid concepts of traditional leadership, as concretised in legislation, comes to the fore. This then creates a basis from which the Traditional and Khoisan Leadership Act 3 of 2019 and the Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act 16 of 2013 are explored.
https://books.openedition.org/irdeditions/45122
À partir d’un double regard d’économie institutionnelle et de socio-anthropologie, le chapitre 1 propose des clés conceptuelles et une grille d’analyse empirique des droits fonciers et, plus
généralement, de l’accès à la terre qui sont mobilisées au fil des chapitres. Une acception des droits fonciers comme actions socialement autorisées sur la terre et ses ressources, la prise en compte du pluralisme normatif et des tensions entre logiques d’acteurs et normes sociales permettent une lecture dynamique des droits sur la terre et des processus de changement institutionnel.
This research intends to verify if the legal institute of property could be combined with the concept of responsibility and accountability. Could property become an instrument to accomplish the needs of the community and to perform the common good?The traditional model of private property is based on the exclusive power granted to a subject on a good and on the absolute freedom to dispose of it and to use it in his own interest. As elaborated by the nineteenth-century codes, the absoluteness of this paradigm has undergone a temperament through the introduction of public and private limits to the exercise of dominion over an asset, with the aim to guarantee a social function of the property. However, the need to give space to solidarity and cooperation requires to overcome the logic of inclusion–exclusion.KeywordsCommon goodLegal systemsComparative lawCivil LawCommon LawFrench RevolutionFrench Civil CodeGerman Civil CodePropertyPrivate propertyPublic propertyOwnershipPossessionBundle of rightsRight to excludeCommonsProgressive property theoriesStewardshipIndigenous rightsIndigenous ownershipCustomary ownershipCommunityResponsibilityAccountabilityInclusionCooperationTrustSolidarityReciprocityFraternity
The protection of property rights is a sensitive issue in the SADC, leading to protracted legal battles and contestations. This article explores the factors engendering the present configurations of property relations in three selected states in the region. The intention of this article is to identify the factors necessary for the development of land markets and to analyse secondary sources on themes, arguments and factors shaping market development. Interrogating the major themes in the prevailing debates, this article identifies African customary rights as an important factor in the development of markets, by acknowledging the significance of the harmonisation of property laws in the region. Since there are cross-juridical gaps between the regulatory goals of states and those of regional communities, the article identifies limitations and opportunities associated with efforts to harmonise the law. Furthermore, proposing measures to narrow the juridical gaps between the municipal and SADC systems, and presenting the idea of a regional protocol as a prospective device to ensure legal convergence.
Land Politics examines the struggle to control land in Africa through the lens of land titling in Zambia and Senegal. Contrary to standard wisdom portraying titling as an inevitable product of economic development, Lauren Honig traces its distinctly political logic and shows how informality is maintained by local actors. The book's analysis focuses on chiefs, customary institutions, and citizens, revealing that the strength of these institutions and an individual's position within them impact the expansion of state authority over land rights. Honig explores common subnational patterns within the two very different countries to highlight the important effects of local institutions, not the state's capacity or priorities alone, on state building outcomes. Drawing on evidence from national land titling records, qualitative case studies, interviews, and surveys, this book contributes new insights into the persistence of institutional legacies and the political determinants of property rights.
In the recent past, Zambia has experienced land governance related issues such as voluntary and involuntary displacements, insecurity of tenure, food insecurity and land disputes. While laudable efforts have been made to uphold and realise land and resource rights of poor rural populations in Zambia, there are several longstanding challenges that remain unresolved. The majority of the rural population still do not enjoy sufficient legal protection of their land rights. This paper shows the inadequate legal recognition of the strength of rights to land and natural resources derived from custom and how to recognise and secure land rights of dwellers in law and practice. The paper also examines the degree to which vested property rights are protected from infringements and analyses land rights in the context of ownership, possession and holder-ship. The relationship between statutory and customary land tenure systems are assessed from the perspective of legal pluralism. Therefore, this paper provides insights into the diversity of land tenure regimes that exist, as well as what constitutes the legal status of land and ways in which they provide for vestment of property rights.
Modern and traditional tenure concepts are closely aligned to property and share property’s complexity and dynamism. The term property defies definition, has different meanings to different people and establishes entitlements through recognition and protection. Property thus connotes different things, has a broad meaning and requires different institutions and mechanisms to actualize the property castle. At the core of property is the relationship between an individual and the community with regard to the use and exploitation of resources and is dependent on enforcement mechanisms of the state. This chapter looks at differences between modern and traditional tenure concepts arguing that property conceptions are contextual and geographically situated. Indeed while the right to exclude is viewed by many as a defining feature of property and exists in modern property systems, it does not exist in traditional property systems that allow multiple rights over property.
Why are some communities better than others at generating cooperative behavior? We argue that mutual dependence on collective social institutions (CSI) increases expectations of cooperation, a key building block for collective action. We examine the effects of mutual dependence by studying property rights institutions in rural Malawi and Zambia. We find that respondents expect their neighbors with customary property rights to be more cooperative than those with land titles – a situation of lower shared dependence on the CSI. A conjoint survey experiment with more than 7,000 respondents allows us to separate the impact of mutual dependence within the CSI from other salient characteristics, including migration status, wealth and ethnicity. Additionally, we explore three forms of institutional obligations that help explain why reduced mutual dependence dampens expectations of cooperation. These findings provide a richer theoretical understanding of the pre-conditions for cooperative behavior and the interdependence that sustains collective action.
This article examines the transformation of mineral matter into mineral property from the vantage point of Ga-Mphahlele, a section of northern South Africa's platinum belt in which minerals are particularly complex to access. Building on Thomas Sikor and Christian Lund's work, I show that the demands of mining capital played a key role in facilitating a co-constitutive relationship between political authority and mineral property. Because of the geological difficulties accessing Ga-Mphahlele's platinum, mining companies have only shown an intermittent interest in the area's minerals, resulting in a volatile relationship between mineral property and political authority. In turn, this has meant that minerals have often been a relatively unstable property form. By adding the role of capital to Lund and Sikor's analytic lens for studying property and authority, this article tracks the relationship between chiefly authority, African land purchasing, platinum companies, and the emergence of mineral rights.
Contemporary discourses on customary land tenure in Africa, and South Africa in particular, have emphasized the socially embedded and flexible nature of customary land rights, recognising these as inherently more ‘pro-poor’ than individual titling. Based on in-depth interviews and participant observations in Venda, a former homeland in South Africa, this paper explores how in the context of expanding commodity frontiers, customary land markets have emerged, leading to de facto privatisation of customary land. This presents new opportunities for rent appropriation by traditional authorities and emergent processes of land accumulation by a minority of smallholder farmers as land rights in relation to orchards have become increasingly individual and exclusive, with access and use rights linked primarily to financial transactions. This paper argues that the increasing de facto privatisation of land within communal areas and its specific character needs to be recognised, and traditional leaders made more downwardly accountable when it comes to land governance, if an inclusive and socially just system of customary land governance is to be achieved.
A major and unresolved challenge facing South Africa’s post-apartheid government, is how best to overcome the historical injustices of land dispossession and the resultant poverty now found in the communal areas of the former 'homelands'. In line with the South African government’s hybrid of neo-liberal and social welfare approaches to development, one important strategy for addressing these challenges has so far been the promotion of inclusive business models such as joint ventures (JVs), especially in the context of land restitution claims, but also in communal areas. This study explores the impacts of the JV model on livelihoods and land rights and use, and engages with key debates regarding the dynamics of class formation in the former 'homelands' of South Africa.
The study undertakes a comparative analysis of two Joint Venture (JV) dairy farms, involving the same agribusiness partner, Amadlelo Agri. The farms are located on irrigation schemes in the former Ciskei of South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province. The JVs involve residents from the rural settlements of Keiskammahoek and Shiloh, as both landowners and workers. The comparative case study presented here illustrates quite divergent outcomes when the same JV model is implemented in different rural settlements, most powerfully because of differences in the class structure of each settlement.
Class analysis helps to explain the more intense intragroup conflicts that have emerged around the JV in Shiloh. Intragroup dynamics and conflicts, which have historical roots extending beyond the implementation of the JV intervention, are also critical to understanding divergent outcomes. A class-analytic approach assists in understanding the tensions that the JV model of capitalist farming generates in relation to household reproduction, in a class-differentiated manner.
The sole focus in much of the literature on agricultural investments has been on relationships between agribusiness, and what are too often portrayed as homogenous 'communities’. However, this thesis illustrates that this approach is misleading when applied to analysis of the real politics on the ground. Struggles over jobs, dividends and land take place within highly differentiated communities. Investigating the inter- and intra-household distribution of JV benefits and risks is central to understanding the impacts of the JV on livelihoods and incomes, and also the emerging contentions and conflicts. To this end, I explore how class interacts with other aspects of social difference, particularly gender, kinship, ethnicity, race, generation and religious affiliation.
A class-analytic approach is significant because it illuminates the emerging agrarian class structure that a JV-type intervention both reflects and in turn conditions, in dialectical fashion. It thus allows exploration of the implications of the JV model for wider processes of agrarian change in South Africa. Although there is evidence of livelihood benefits being derived by some households, as well as limited opportunities for accumulation, the JV model does not appear to stimulate the emergence of a class of productive black farmers. Significantly, the study could not identify any households as 'middle farmers', reliant on 'accumulation from below', which many authors consider to be a more progressive, dynamic and desirable pathway of agrarian reform. The JV model is at risk of equating ‘black emerging farmers’ with a group of customary landowners, who are in reality workers and 'passive recipients' of JV dividends and land rents.
It is often stated that indigenous law confers no property rights in land. Okoth-Ogenda reconceptualised indigenous land rights by debunking the myth that indigenous land rights systems are necessarily "communal" in nature, that "ownership" is collective and that the community as an entity makes collective decisions about the access and use of land.[1] He offers a different understanding of indigenous land rights systems by looking at the social order of communities that create "reciprocal rights and obligations that this binds together, and vests power in the community members over land". To determine who will be granted access to or exercise control over land and the resources, one needs to look at these rights and obligations and the performances that arise from them. This will leave only two distinct questions: who may have access to the land (and what type of access)[2] and who may control and manage the land resources on behalf of those who have access to it?[3] There is a link with this reconceptualisation and the discourse of the commons. Ostrom's classification of goods leads to a definition of the commons (or common pool of resources) as "a class of resources for which exclusion is difficult and joint use involves subtractablity".[4] The questions this article wishes to answer are: would it firstly be possible to classify the indigenous land rights system as a commons, and secondly would it provide a useful analytical framework in which to solve the problem of securing land tenure in South Africa?[1] Okoth-Ogendo "Nature of Land Rights" 100.[2] See Ben Cousin's comments and examples in Cousins "Characterising 'Communal' Tenure" 122.[3] Okoth-Ogendo "Nature of Land Rights" 100.[4] Feeny et al 1990 Human Ecology 4.
This paper questions the novelty of post-2000 development strategies, in particular the US’s Millennium Challenge Corporation and its ethos of ‘poverty reduction through economic growth.’ Using land as a lens, I explore recent eras of development assistance and ask if the Millennium-era has been appreciably different from pre-2000 development. The backdrop of my study is an MCC-sponsored land reform in Lesotho. I use data drawn from fieldwork in Lesotho to argue that the logics and outcomes of the Development industry’s land policies have remained largely the same. Despite the anti-poverty rhetoric, the residents of a peri-urban village near Maseru, Lesotho’s capital, are more likely to be dispossessed of their land than they were before the MCC’s land reform began. The reform provided Lesotho with economic growth, but no apparent poverty reduction. I argue that the MCC’s land reform project in Lesotho demonstrates the continued primacy of economic growth in post-2000 international development. There is a gulf between economic growth and poverty reduction that is not addressed by Development practitioners who claim that growth itself is sufficient to reduce poverty. In the case of Lesotho, I argue that the work of Development and dispossession are linked, amounting to ‘Development by dispossession.’
The article addresses the dualistic legal paradigm prevalent in South Africa’s approach to recognising rights in land. The system of title is characterised by precise and quantifiable mathematical formulae formalised through paper records that convey proprietary powers to registered owners. This view is contrasted with the characteristics of land tenure among African families with freehold title in the Eastern Cape who trace their relationship to their land to forebears who acquired title in the nineteenth century. The findings show that relationships reminiscent of ‘customary’ concepts of the family are not extinguished when title is issued. The land is viewed as family property held by unilineal descent groups symbolised by the family name. This conception diverges considerably from the formal, legal notion of land title as embodied in common law, and from rules of inheritance in official customary law. African freeholders’ source of legitimation of successive rights in land is not the ‘law’ but locally understood norms framed within identifiable parameters that sanction socially acceptable practices. The conclusion raises broader questions about the paradigm that informs South African law reform in a range of tenure contexts, suggesting that current policies are poorly aligned with the social realities on the ground.
The article responds to the article by Weinberg in this issue. She traces the trajectory of court hearings concerning the contested inheritance of land in Botswana, which, after several prior judgements eventually resulted in a positive outcome for the woman litigants. I acknowledge the author's key argument, which concerns the impact of power relations on the construction of customary law and the reproduction of knowledge in the courts. Certain versions of “custom” were promoted and others stilled to the disadvantage of women. I argue that the normative patterns of landholding are indeed gendered, but do not result in a binary structure of men and women. “Gender” should be disaggregated to take into account a range of status criteria within and across the categories of male and female in order to understand the differential impact of social relations on the outcomes of property struggles. The normative lines of property transmission frequently follow a logic of “family property” that allows for qualifying women to rights of property. Family property has vastly different social and legal consequences to private, individualised property rights. The corollary is that it is misleading to speak of the processes of succession to rights of access to, and control of customary property in terms of one-to-one “inheritance” of land. The concept of “living law” inadequately reflects these social dynamics.
For a brief time, the ‘green revolution’ exported by China to West Africa brought Liberia, Sierra Leone, and The Gambia a little closer to their goals of rice self-sufficiency. Many of the innovations introduced by the Chinese disappeared leaving only the smallest trace of institutional memory. Others were adopted by local farmers or by government officials convinced of their value, and thus even today reflections of Chinese practice can be seen in scattered areas of West Africa: the bright green of transplanted seedlings standing in an irrigated paddy, or the flash of sickles at harvest time. Yet several puzzles remain after our examination of China’s green revolution technologies. First, the successful adoption of the complete package of China’s irrigated rice technology was rare, even when it appeared to be an appropriate and profitable technology for local farmers. And second, although all three projects started with much the same design: higher technology agrotechnical stations with lower technology village extension areas, they diverged markedly by the end of their five year lives. The Gambia merged China’s independent agrotechnical stations with its own rice program, bringing the Chinese firmly under Gambian management. Liberia shifted from agrotechnical stations and village farmers, to a large-scale rice plantation. Only Sierra Leone maintained the autonomous agrotechnical centers operated by the Chinese with a high degree of autonomy from the Sierra Leonean government. Both puzzles call attention to the importance of institutional factors.
If the descriptor ‘African legal theory, jurisprudence or philosophy’ suggests a purist conception of ‘African’ legal theory, jurisprudence or philosophy then the intellectual enterprise so undertaken is futile and impossible. It is more plausible to envision ‘African’ legal theory, jurisprudence or philosophy under Homi Bhabha’s idea of ‘culture’s in-between’; which denies a purist conception of ‘culture’ and emphasizes the diversity of ‘influence’. This interpretation is pertinent since in the consideration of ‘Africa’ as a space and the received-ness of ‘law’ and ‘the legal’ in that space, the understanding of any phenomenon as ‘African’ ought to be a nuanced engagement. I am not denying the ability of the constituency re-identified as ‘African’ to know or to think. I am suggesting that scholarship must, first, acknowledge that the violence of modernity on ‘knowledge’ or ‘thought’ has been far-reaching and deep-rooted. Second, the de-Europeanization or de-Americanization among the authorship of (supposedly) ‘African’ legal theory, jurisprudence or philosophy does not necessarily imply that the underlying conceptions of the resultant scholarship are not rooted in modernity. An approach to what may be called ‘African’ legal theory, jurisprudence or philosophy based on the idea of ‘culture’s in-between’ acknowledges two things: First, the convoluted socio-political environment of ‘law’ or the ‘legal’ in Africa (or in the African) which permeates into its theory, jurisprudence or philosophy. Second, the diversity of influence that underlies the ‘culture’s in-between’ thesis presents a window for the consideration of what is being termed ‘African’ in theory, jurisprudence or philosophy in confronting global phenomena.
The imposition of 'tribal levies' was a flashpoint for the anti-Bantustan rebellions of the 1980s. Rural people objected to traditional leaders demanding excessive levies that were not adequately accounted for. The Constitution authorises only the three levels of government to tax, and circumscribes taxation power in various ways. Yet rural people report a resurgence of demands for tribal levies in all the former homelands, and in 2005, the Limpopo Traditional Leadership and Institutions Act provided for the imposition of 'traditional council rates'. This article describes the upsurge of tribal levies in the context of the ambiguity of recent laws and policy in respect of traditional leadership and tribal taxation. It argues that tribal levies are inconsistent with the Constitution and that they derive from colonial and apartheid laws and distortions, rather than from customary law per se. It focuses on Limpopo Province.
Challenging portrayals of West African female farmers as a homogenous group, the present study provides an ethnographic account of the contractual relations established between female hosts and migrants, in the exchange of land and labour for agrarian production in The Gambia.
This fascinating interdisciplinary book is about land, belonging, and the mortgage-and how people of different cultural backgrounds understand them in Africa. Drawing on years of ethnographic observation, Parker Shipton discusses how people in Africa's interior feel about their attachment to family, to clan land, and to ancestral graves on the land. He goes on to explain why systems of property, finance, and mortgaging imposed by outsiders threaten Africa's rural people. The book looks briefly at European and North American theories on private property and the mortgage, then shows how these theories have played out as attempted economic reforms in Africa. They affect not just personal ownership and possession, he suggests, but also the complex relationships that add up to civil order and episodic disorder over a longer history. Focusing particular attention on the Luo people of Kenya, Shipton challenges assumptions about rural economic development and calls for a broader understanding of local realities in Africa and beyond.
This book explores the changing land relations in the peri-urban villages of Blantyre in Malawi. It questions and debates how and why the peri-urban villages have become the locus of the selling and buying of customary land, the practices and also the relations involved. The book provides rich ethnographic insights on the commodification of land relations, custom, practices, disputes and social relations between land sellers, land buyers, traditional leaders, and intermediaries. The transactions draw strength from the growing peri-urbanization and monetization of social relations, both of which push towards land decisions at family and individual levels. Bigger groups like the village, clan or extended family have minimal, if not symbolic role only. Village headmen benefit materially by taking gifts (signing fee) rationalized by custom on reciprocity, while estate agents claim commission. Numerous constraints are negotiated about the ownership, rights to sale, multiple selling and the use and sharing of land money. Peri-urban land transactions offer scope for examining a wider range of social and economic relations, and the subtle ways in which the state infiltrates the everyday lives of actors. Overtime, the practices reproduce but also transform land relations in significant but less appreciated ways.
Since the 1992 signing of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, biodiversity has become a salient component of international discourse and, as such, a key means through which power relations at the global level are redrawn (Escobar 1996). The struggle over intellectual property rights and plant breeders' patents is one dimension of this discourse and the focus of substantial research (Mooney 1996). In the contest to establish whose knowledge counts and the effort to promote the conservation of biodiversity globally, those people who depend on the maintenance of biodiversity for their livelihoods are increasingly recognized as central players. Yet despite global recognition of the need for locallevel research on biodiversity, study of the relationship between tenurial rights to agricultural land and biodiversity has been neglected (Howard-Borgas and Cuijpers 2002).1. © 2005 by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. All rights reserved.
In many regions of Africa gender-biased interventions and land tenure systems traditionally controlled by patrilineal descent groups have limited women's capacity to contribute to development. Empirical evidence suggests a shift among some cultures from corporate to more individualized forms of tenure, often associated with adoption of commercialized agricultural practices, which may lead to the displacement of existing land use systems (such as bush fallow). Affinal women, whose tenure security is marginal, may depend upon resources whose production and/or regeneration owes in large part to the fallow stage of a land extensive production cycle. Elimination of fallow by default eliminates resources of economic importance to women. Among the Bambara of Mali, applying the term "individualization" to any such change ignores the reality that the individuals in question are overwhelmingly male, and thus the gendered character of change may be of more fundamental importance than any tendency toward more individualized rights.
Expressions Indicating varying degrees of dissatisfaction with systems of land tenure prevailing in sub-Saharan Africa are very common, and the view is widely held that the traditional institutions which govern land rights operate in a manner obstructive to agricultural development. “If enterprise is to be given an opportunity to express itself”, writes Dr. Yudelman in a recent book, “there must be a break with traditional institutions which govern land”.Views of this kind call for decisions regarding the substitution of one system of law for another, or for various kinds of radical reform including the engrafting onto the traditional system of legal expedients and devices proved useful in other systems of law. Such decisions, however, patently require much more than a mere nodding acquaintance with the existing local law, the changes sought to be introduced therein, and their functioning in the systems of law from which they are to be borrowed. Accordingly a need exists for a kind of comparative legal analysis of existing systems of landholding which can throw into relief the real points of weakness that need to be remedied or pruned away, while also indicating the elements that are worthy to be retained, if even only as the stock upon which novel arrangements may be engrafted.
As I read Dr. Allott's article “Towards a definition of Absolute Ownership” I felt increasing dismay because it postulates and makes appear immensely difficult, a problem which in actual working practice barely exists at all. For over sixty years Settlement Officers in the Sudan have been successfully determining ownership without the help of any definition, and in Kenya, during the last five years, the ownership of over a million plots has similarly been decided by committees. Even in West Africa, where there has been no process of systematic adjudication, ownership has been determined in over three thousand cases in Lagos, and ownership is not defined. Indeed I am not familiar with any statute anywhere which does define it.
This draft is an attempt to meet a particular difficulty, which is likely to occur not infrequently in African countries where the present land law is dualistic in character and represents a partial amalgamation, or co-existence, of English and customary laws relating to land. Increasingly these two bodies of law will tend to draw together (as they have already done to a considerable extent in West Africa), and legislation will have to be prepared from time to time which is capable of applying both to interests held under English law and to interests under various sorts of customary law. This is pre-eminently the case where any proposal for registration, of title to land is involved, since the register (if it is not accompanied by a radical revision of the substantive land law) will have to show under as few heads as possible the different sorts of title that can exist in respect of land, under customary as well as under English law (where the latter forms the basis of the general law of the territory).
Summarises the findings of a widely based study undertaken by the U.N. Research Institute for Social Development and examines the failure of the 'Green Revolution' to transform or improve the nutritional situation in the developing world. Where technology has been successful agronomically, it has been profitable and competition has increased for control of land and for access to sources of capital. The few examples of successful peasant-based agricultural development were conditional upon the absence of competing capitalist agriculture. After discussing the conceptual framework and characteristics of the new technology, examines three types of agrarian structures from Africa, Asia and Latin America. The last section sums up the critical issues and looks at technological policies and peasant-based strategies whereby productivity can be increased without gross polarisation of wealth. - D. A. Preston
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Procuring loan through pledging of cocoa trees
- Adegboye
Property theory and land use analysis: an essay in the political economy of ideas
- Okoth-Ogendo