Land governance, sustainability and poverty in rural Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe

Project established in 2006

This project argues that constraints on African agricultural and rural development are closely linked with historical and institutional aspects, including the role of nation states, and global economic forces. The interplay between these aspects and their linkage to land tenure, i.e. access, control and disposal of land, and land governance, encompassing legal aspects, state policies and interventions, are of key importance for explaining the path that SSA agriculture has taken and the challenges it is currently facing. These aspects must, however, be seen in the context of rural indigenous institutions that remain central to the allocation of land, guide gendered divisions of labour and rights and contain norms impacting on land and natural resource management

The project will synthesise past and ongoing research and generate new research related to land tenure and governance across historical contexts and current challenges in Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Ethiopia. These countries differ in historic and institutional respects, thus possibilities will arise to understand which issues and outcomes are general and which can be referred to particular historical contexts   Common to all countries is scarcity induced conflicts due to the inability of land tenure systems to respond to challenges and faulty state policies. The grave situation is characterised by very high rural poverty rates and an extreme share of poverty in rural areas i.e. the respective figures for Tanzania are 49.7 and 82.3 per cent, for Ethiopia 45.0 and 86.3 per cent and Zimbabwe 48.0 and 90 per cent

The project will address the following major questions:

1) How do the different historical contexts affect land governance and to what extent are they related to a common African heritage, e.g. customary law and the role of indigenous institutions, to colonial legacies and variations regarding received law? What are the current challenges of integrating these strands of law into a new common land law and how are these processes evolving?

2) Are indigenous institutions that mediate access to land able to respond to external and internal pressures including population growth, commercialisation, technical change and state intervention? What are the major causes for lack of institutional responses and can policy-, legal- and support activities help strengthen such responses or do they have to evolve from within rural societies?

3) Do customary tenure systems hold back productivity due to being considered insecure and if so is this caused by lack of legal protection or other reasons? Are women’s user rights in customary systems constraining their productive potential? Can land individualisation or other tenure forms at household, clan and community levels secure productivity growth, sustainability and poverty reduction?