Land tenure for African development

1
Land tenure for African development

• Day 1 summary

2
Land Tenure Reform for What?

• Revealed different sets of assumptions from
  different areas of Africa regarding the need for
  land tenure reform
• ie Equity
• Historical redress Southern Af
• Herder / Farmer, Migrant / Local West Af
• Feudal Classes pre Revolutionary Ethiopia
• Gender universal
• Economic Development, Livelihood Security,
  Environmental Sustainability, Conflict
  (prevention / resolution / post conflict

3
Tenure Security and Development in Africa

• Widespread argument that tenure insecurity
  inimitable to development objectives
• Virtually all of Africa colonized relatively
  recently, in lower land value areas relatively
  moderate direct impact failure to extinguish
  local rule sets and institutions re land
• Could legal dualism / pluralism provide a key to
  understanding underlying dynamic driving tenure
  insecurity in Africa?

4
Day 1 Review

• Land tenure important for livelihoods, equity,
  empowerment and broader development goals
• Land tenure is a governance issue
• Yet tenure systems insecure
• Securing land tenure critical, but non trivial
  and unclear
• Replacement not an option, customary rights here
  to stay!

5

• Legal pluralism/dualism a critical defining
  feature
• Customary arrangements critical for livelihoods
  and development of the poor, yet important
  consequences for womens access
• Common property and communal arrangements
  prevalent
• Common property unrecognized and insecure

6

• Adaptation desirable, but how adaptation?
• Formalize group rights? How? Decentralized
  decisions a must
• Incorporate customary? Or incorporate statutory?
  How does this matter?
• Delink land tenure codification from
  collateralization

7
But also Consider

• Linking land tenure to broader development
  policies-agriculture and rural development
• Cross-border aspects of land management
• Rural-urban-peri-urban linkages
• Subsidiarity
• The problem of multiple initiative syndrome and
  coordination