Policy Discourses on Women's Land Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Implications of the Re-turn to the Customary (original) (raw)
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This contribution is concerned with the challenges of securing women's rights to land in Africa in the context of contemporary land deals through a discussion of three distinct but interrelated problems in the framing of women's land rights discourses. First, this study discusses the interface between rights and "custom" to highlight the inherent distortions of African customary law. Second, it argues that liberal formulations of the law are limited by a set of assumptions regarding women's position in the political economy. And third, this discussion discursively assesses the debates in the literature regarding the efficacy of law in protecting women's rights to land. The discussion proceeds from a critique of two approaches to promoting gender equity in land tenure systems: the institutional approach, which deals with women's formal land rights; and the political economy approach, which deals with the structural nature of women's traditional relations to land.
Diminished access, diverted exclusion: Women and land tenure in sub-Saharan Africa
African Studies Review, 1999
Increasing commercialization, population growth and concurrent increases in land value have affected women's land rights in Africa. Most of the literature concentrates on how these changes have led to an erosion of women's rights. This paper examines some of the processes by which women's rights to land are diminishing. First, we examine cases where rights previously utilized have become less important; that is, the incidence of exercising rights has decreased. Second, we investigate how women's rights to land decrease as the public meanings underlying the social interpretation and enforcement of rights are manipulated. Third, we examine women's diminishing access to land when the actual rules of access change.
Securing women's customary rights in land: the fallacy of institutonal recognition
The general wisdom of a decade ago that the privatisation of property rights and registration of individual titles on communal land would ensure the protection and promotion of women's land rights in Africa, has all but successfully been dispelled. As an alternative, the strengthening of customary tenure systems and localised land administration as the panacea to ensuring equitable tenure security on the continent have received a lot of attention. This alternative is apparently facilitated by the move across the continent to afford customary law recognition as a source of law. This paper investigates both the alternative of strengthening customary law institutions in order to strengthen women's customary tenure and the prior assumption that customary law is now properly recognised by domestic systems on the continent. Drawing on the South African experience that includes explicit constitutional recognition of custom and rigorous engagement from the Constitutional Court, the paper argues that the problem is no longer the recognition of customary law, but the manner in which such recognition occurs. Relying on the theory of complexity to understand empirical examples of women asserting stronger property rights under customary law, the paper attempts to unpack what proper recognition should entail in particular in order for it to be a tool for the protection of the rights of women. Finally, and in relation to the work of Christian Lund on the nature of property rights, it enquires into the potential role of the courts and the legislature in the proper recognition and development of customary law.
Oxford Development Studies, 2002
The debate over land reform in Africa is embedded in evolutionary models, in which it is assumed landholding systems are evolving into individualized systems of ownership with greater market integration. This process is seen to be occurring even without state protection of private land rights through titling. Gender as an analytical category is excluded in evolutionary models. Women are accommodated only in their dependent position as the wives of landholders in idealized 'households'. This paper argues that gender relations are central to the organization and transformation of landholding systems. Women have faced different forms of tenure insecurity, both as wives and in their relations with wider kin, as landholding systems have been integrated into wider markets. These cannot be addressed while evolutionary models dominate the policy debate. The paper draws out these arguments from experience of tenure reform in Tanzania and asks how policy-makers might address these issues differently.
Women's Movements, Customary Law, and Land Rights in Africa: The Case of Uganda
Much of the literature on women and land tenure in Africa has viewed the introduction of land titling, registration, and the privatization of land under colonialism and after independence as a setback for women, leaving women in a state of even greater insecurity with poorer prospects for accessing land, and hence, obtaining a livelihood. The demise of the authority of clans and local elders has made women's land rights even more precarious. In this context women's movements in Africa have adopted a rights-based approach that challenges customary land and other practices. In doing so they have contradicted a new consensus among policymakers around the view that sees land tenure policy as building on customary systems and giving them legal recognition This paper attempts to account for this apparent contradiction in the case of Uganda, which has gone further than most African countries in devolving land administration to the local level, while at the same time giving rise to one of the most active women's movements challenging customary land tenure practices. If women were benefiting from customary land tenure arrangements, as the development practitioners argue, one would think the preservation of customary rights or modifications in the customary systems would have been desirable goals of the movement. This paper explores this apparent divergence of approaches to women's land rights.
2021
Despite their key role in agriculture, in many African regions, women do not have equal access to or control and ownership over land and natural resources as men. As a consequence, international organizations, national governments and non-governmental organizations have joined forces to develop progressive policies and legal frameworks to secure equal land rights for women and men at individual and collective levels in customary tenure systems. However, women and men at the local level may not be aware of women's rights to land, and social and cultural relations may prevent women from claiming their rights. In this context, there are many initiatives and programs that aim to empower women in securing their rights. But still very little is known about the existing strategies and practices women employ to secure their equal rights and control over land and other natural resources. In particular, the lived experiences of women themselves are somewhat overlooked in current debates a...
Women, Culture and Africa’s Land Reform Agenda
Frontiers in Psychology, 2018
Pre-colonial Africa prides itself on adherence to diverse cultural affinity and traditional belief systems, which defines the place of women in respect to land access, use and ownership. Land resources continue to play important roles in both agrarian and industrial societies; thus the absence of effective land management and gender construction in land allocations has deepened gender inequality, restricted women's capacity building and agricultural development in Africa. This article explores the impact of traditional African practices and cultural beliefs on women's land ownership and use, and also reconciles women's land rights (access and control) with the realities of land reform in post-colonial Africa. It explores how gender inequalities, in terms of land ownership and rights, have jeopardized attempts at agricultural productivity and sustainable development in Africa. However, it is tasking to 'universalize' African culture and locate it in a center, due to the diverse cultural values found in Africa. However, there are certain belief systems that run through most African communities, such as the denial of women's land rights and the patriarchal nature of societies. Thus, the article found that, despite the development of legal frameworks that expand women's property rights, cases of cultural impediments to the exercise of land rights abound in Africa.
RE-ENVISIONING GENDER JUSTICE IN ACCESS AND USE OF LAND THROUGH TRADITIONAL INSTITUTIONS
This research paper explores the extent to which the use of traditional institutions in land dispute resolution creates an opportunity for the protection of women’s rights to access and use land held under customary tenure in the Acholi Sub Region, Northern Uganda. The role of traditional institutions in dispute resolutions presents weakness and challenges, but also strengths and windows of opportunity. This can be used to marry the strengths arising from traditional institutions with the middle ground attempts of the state to introduce human rights principles aimed at protecting women’s right to land. This paper recommends the utilization of the “windows of opportunity” presented by the traditional institutions, through understanding the variation of custom.
Policy Brief: Securing women's land rights in Eastern Africa. Time for a paradigm shift
The importance of land to poor people's livelihoods cannot be over emphasized. Land provides the foundation upon which people construct and maintain livelihoods. Consequently, secure access to land is a prerequisite for securing livelihoods. Women are the majority of the poor as they have limited access to social and economic resources. This increases their dependence on basic resources like land. The majority of women rely on a land based livelihood mainly as subsistence agricultural producers. A secured access to land will enable women to improve their welfare and that of their families. Women's capacity to develop and improve their situation is hampered by limited access to resources like land, financial capital, economic capital, labour and technology. In recognition of this, various initiatives have been undertaken at the government level to improve and secure women's access to land. The initiatives have had limited impact partially because of the limited resources and effectiveness of government. Research in East Africa has revealed how community based interventions can not only compliment but also provide more effective means through which government policies can be implemented for the benefit of women. The paper draws on research carried out in Uganda and Kenya to illustrate the ways in which local level and non-governmental institutions can improve women's access to land by drawing on existing government policies and legislation. Introduction 1 1. Women's Access to Land: A review 2 2. Research overview of women's land tenure status in East Africa 5 3. Harnessing women's agency to secure women's access to land 6 4. The role of intermediary institutions in increasing women's land tenure security 10
Securing Customary Land Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa
2015
Africa live in rural areas and make a livelihood from agriculture and other land-based production activities. Secure tenure to land is thus of fundamental importance for these people. Yet even today very few of them have title to their land but get access to it through various informal customary tenure arrangements. 2 While research has since long shown that landholdings under such systems are not necessarily insecure (Bruce and Migot-Adholla 1994), with increased population pressure and commercialization of production there is a tendency for these customary tenure systems to disintegrate or to become manipulated by local elites (Peters 2004). Another factor relevant in this context is the escalating global demand for land for large-scale production of biofuels, food export crops, forest plantations, etc., which is particularly prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa (Cotula 2012). In those countries where customary tenure is not recognized in statutory law, there is a clear risk that land held under this system is not respected when land concessions for such investment projects are being granted. And even when customary tenure rights are recognized in the national legislation, it may still be difficult for local people to defend their land rights against such outside claims simply because their holdings are not demarcated and registered, and therefore not identifiable on maps and in official cadastres. There is today a growing awareness of the importance of providing local people with more secure rights to land as illustrated, for example, by the overall land policy guidelines adopted by African Heads of State in the context of the African Union (AU-ECA-AfDB Consortium 2010). Similarly, though at a global level, there are the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure adopted by the Committee on World Food Security in 2012, which also draw attention to the importance of providing especially poor rural women and men with more secure tenure to land and other natural resources (FAO 2012). Yet, one thing is to express the need for more secure tenure in principle, another is finding ways for how this could be realized in practice given the particular social, cultural, economic and political conditions that prevail in Sub-Saharan Africa. The conventional approach for securing property rights to land is by establishing a system of private ownership through individual titling. This approach has been tried in several African countries over the years but with mixed results. Such individual privatization of land