Civil Unrest and Land Governance in Sub-Saharan Africa

David K. Leonard (Univ. of California, Berkeley) Kathleen Klaus (Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison)

Patrick A.Z. Zadi (Service Civil à la Paix de l’ONG Allemande EIRENE pour la région du

Sahel)

The Problem

• Disputes over the way in which agricultural lands are governed have contributed to violent conflict in many parts of tropical Africa.

• What is the source of the problem and is there anything better that could have been done?

• [Based on research the presenters have been involved with in DR Congo, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Senegal, Somalia, South Africa and Tanzania.]

Land Governance rather than Land Tenure

• Land governance covers not only access to land but also the labor that is needed to render it productive

• and it is delivered not just by formal governmental laws and regulations but also informal community governance systems and evolving cultural norms about family and community relations.

State Only Intrusive

• The African state, both historically and today, influences the way in which land and labour are used.

• But it has not been able to exercise hegemonic control of either set of practices.

• This is true even of the ‘strong’ African states, such as Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, and Senegal

Land Gov and Conflict

• Disputes often produce localized conflicts• Generalized conflicts usually are stimulated by

national elites• But even in latter, tensions over land

governance often “feed and sustain the fire”• Thus the economic impact of land gov.

systems lies not just in their econ. Efficiency but also in their local legitimacy.

Historical ‘Ideal Type’

• From Sara Berry• Land use rights embedded in extended families

of those who first cleared or conquered it.• Labor is provided in relationships with these

families – marriage, loan. bonding• Hired labor is rare in land clearance and food

production and tends to be reserved for cash crops.

Sources of Tension

• Inequalities in access to land• Ambiguities in family rights and in their

incompatibilities with national land law and ntl. elite prerogatives

• Resolution requires a ‘following’ (i.e., political influence) in the relevant decision forum

• When that ‘resolution’ is unstable nationally, the space for violent local conflict is opened.

Exceptions to Violence in Western Côte d’Ivoire

• Battle area in presidential election, as connected with tensions between ‘sons of the soil’ and in-migrants

• Exception #1 eliminated permanent sale and permitted (and registered) only transactions in use rights for a limited period of time

• #2 assembled entire extended family to be sure of consent to sale

• #3 a ntl. elite from village brokered partial return of plots to landless ‘sons’.

Kenyan Rift Valley

• After independence Kikuyu had settled in the White Highlands that had been taken from the Kalenjin

• Exception where both groups had secure land titles (rather than relying on the patronage of leaders) and elders built mutual trust

• So national titles helped here but didn’t in Côte d’Ivoire

Take-Aways

• Local communities can and do exercise agency to avoid processes that are producing violent conflict in neigboring villages.

• We need to understand how and why this agency works so that we can encourage and facilitate it.

• We want to research case studies on exceptions to violence in a variety of African conflict countries.