African Land Reform Under Economic Liberalisation


Book Description

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.




Essays on Land Law


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Land Reform in Kenya


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Trajectory of Land Reform in Post-Colonial African States


Book Description

This book is an examination of post-colonial land reforms across various African states. One of the decisive contradictions of colonialism in Africa was the distortion of use, access to and ownership of land. Land related issues and the need for land reform have consistently occupied a unique position in public discourse in Africa. The post-colonial African states have had to embark on concerted efforts at redressing historical grounded land policies and addressing the growing needs of land by the poor. However, agitations for land continue, while evidence of policy gaps abound. In many cases, policy change in terms of land use, distribution and ownership has reinforced inequalities and affected power and social relations in respective post-colonial African countries. Land has assumed major causes of structural violence and impediments to human and rural development in Africa; hence the need for holistic assessment of land reforms in post-colonial African states. The central objective of the text is to identify post-independence and current trends in land reform and to address the grievances in relation to land use, ownership and distribution. The book suggests practicable policy options towards addressing the land hunger and conflict, which could derail the ‘moderate’ socio-economic achievements and political stability recorded by post-colonial African nation-states. The book draws its strength and uniqueness from its adoption of country-specific case studies, which places the book in context, and utilizes field studies methodology which generate new knowledge on the continental land question. Taking a holistic approach to understanding Africa’s land question, this book will be attractive to academicians and students interested in policy and development, African politics, post-colonial development and policy, and conflict studies as well as policy-makers working in relevant areas.




The Social Cost of Small Families & Land Reform


Book Description

A convincing argument against the widespread belief that rapid population growth is an obstacle to socio-economic development, while individual land ownership is a prerequisite. The author presents an in-depth study of traditional land tenure in Taita, Kenya, where the implementation of birth control programmes and the individualization of land tenure have failed to eradicate rural poverty and have brought about other sociopsychological problems. This book is of vital importance to development personnel to help them place the problem of population growth in its proper perspective.




Land Reform in the Kikuyu Country


Book Description

Study of agrarian reform in the kikuyu region of Kenya - covers historical aspects of land tenure and land settlement, the role of UK in respect thereof before independence, relevant political problems and government policy, etc., and includes comments on relevant legislation. Statistical tables, maps, and bibliography pp. 253 to 256.




People, Place and Property Rights


Book Description

For more than a century, property rights to land in Molo in the Kenyan highlands have been subjected to diverse reforms and desires. Colonial and independent state administrations have restructured land tenure systems to establish and maintain authority or alleviate landlessness. Meanwhile, people on the ground have developed their own ideas about property rights, place, and people. Via a detailed political ethnography, Ulrika Kolben Waaranperä uncovers the heterodox notion of property rights that has emerged as land has been redistributed, settlement schemes established, electricity lines drawn, and electoral violence mobilized. The book makes an important contribution to the study of land and politics in Kenya and beyond by drawing attention to how conceptions of property rights are shaped by and constitutive of relations of belonging and authority. This relational view challenges the universal definition of property rights undergirding most contemporary land reforms. Instead, property rights are situated within the political and rendered legible for both definitional and distributional debates. In effect, land reform is posited as a fundamentally political undertaking.







Political Violence in Kenya


Book Description

An analysis of land and natural resource conflict as a source of political violence, focusing on election violence in Kenya.