Paper short abstract:

The comparative analysis of two case studies on the governance of rangelands in Southern Kenya underscores how the operationalization of the law expected to recognize community land rights has been instrumentalized to serve international and national investments, and elites' political strategies.

Paper long abstract:

Policy debates on land tenure in Africa have been driven by international paradigms and standards on economic development, discussing the trade-off between productivity and sustainability. A dichotomist vision has often opposed the forces urging the privatisation of both the land and the natural resources, against the impelling push towards preserving the commons. In Kenya, the Community Land Act (CLA), promulgated in 2016 appeared to have marked a turning point by settling the debate on the urgent need of preserving the livelihood practices that ensure sustainable land uses, such as pastoralism in drylands, but also shielding communities from dispossession, and the pauperization resulting from land commoditization and marketization.

Yet, few years after the enactment of the law, it has become evident that its operationalization has rather been instrumentalized to favour international and national capitals and investments, as well as to serve the strategies of political and economic elites pursuing territorial control. The comparative analysis of two case studies on the governance of rangelands in Southern Kenya (Kajiado --Kuku location-- and Narok --Loita location) emphasises the politics of implementing the CLA. It underscores the national and local dynamics that have led and still underpins negotiated processes of on-going land subdivision. It argues that the failure of securing collective or group-based land rights will hinder the capacity of communities to sustain semi-nomadic pastoralism and tackle extended drought, in a context of ideologization of the private property model, pressing conservation-based and/or intensive farming-orianted investments, dramatic ecological changes, transgenerational epistemological transformations and politicians’ neo-patrimonial strategies.

Paper short abstract:

Balancing domestic elite and foreign interests in land and natural resources vis-à-vis present and future peasant pastoral land based livelihoods are emerging as central issues for democracy and autonomous development in Africa.

Paper long abstract:

Crises such as the COVID-19 global pandemic provides opportunities to reflect and re-think on many aspects including tenure and agrarian reforms. COVID-19 disruptions in global food supply chains, trade and border closures stresses the importance of comprehensive land policies in Africa for securing the welfare and future livelihoods of 60 percent of its population dependent on agriculture. The onset of pandemic came amidst unprecedented pressures by global capitalists to acquire control over and use of peasant lands through subversion of sovereign land policy making in most African countries. Within a Transformative Social Policy framework, Tanzania and Zimbabwe are presented as polar opposites in autonomous policy making, implementation and the future of land based livelihood outcomes under neoliberal capitalism. Using a combination of secondary and primary data, preliminary evidence suggests that the domineering influence of external actors working in cohorts with domestic allies led to the concessioning of peasant lands and large-scale disenfranchisement of peasant and pastoral communities in Tanzania. The effect on the present and future peasant livelihoods and welfare need no further emphasis. Exemplifying efforts towards autonomous development in the face of severed relationships with the international donor community and its governments, the peasant-dominated radical land redistribution programme in Zimbabwe and its welfare outcomes is presented as an oxymoron under the prevailing neoliberal ideological framework.

Key words: tenure reform, policy making, peasant livelihoods, transformative social policy, Zimbabwe, Tanzania

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how the politics of knowledge and ontology surrounding land governance reinforces political economic trajectories by making it hard to see and enact land otherwise. In so doing, it contributes a much-needed ideational approach to futures studies.

Paper long abstract:

Africa is increasingly positioned as a “last frontier” of resource extraction and financialization globally, with renewed attention to its land, water, wildlife and sub-surface resources as productive and financial assets. Neoliberal reforms have further greased the wheels for transboundary flows of investment capital and profit, while providing secure access to land and favorable tax regimes for investors. African land futures are therefore being strongly shaped by the present moment – establishing path dependencies that will reverberate far into the future.

This paper takes these political economic processes not as its focus but its backdrop, exploring how “the politics of knowledge” surrounding land and its governance legitimate these political economic processes, while reinforcing these path dependencies by making it hard to see and enact land otherwise. It reveals how the World Bank, bilateral land donors and allied NGOs have contributed to the spread of ontological assumptions aligned with the neoliberal project, while sidelining place-based ontologies of land and security.

Drawing on the politics of knowledge (specifically, processes through which situated constructs are normalized and rendered universal) and the ontological turn (in its interrogation the concepts through which the world is brought into being), the paper makes a novel contribution to future studies by moving beyond the dominant focus on political economy to the neglect of other processes (Roth and Kaivo-oja 2016). It shows how futurity is “hemmed in” by the advanced specification of fields of vision and action through which certain constructs are advanced as universal truths, and others rendered invisible.

Paper short abstract:

Supported by former President Kikwete (2005-2015), the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT) was discontinued by his successor Magufuli (2015-2021). Although the end of SAGCOT could have meant the end of land grabbing in the Kilombero Valley, new evictions are already underway.

Paper long abstract:

The access to and ownership of land is the central land question of Tanzania in the 21st century (Maghimbi et al. 2011). As the population grows, the availability of land per capita reduces. This dynamic pressures central governments to find answers for an agrarian society that, thus far, is structured in smallholder schemes. President Kikwete (2005-2015) envisioned the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT). It suggested a third of the country to be ready for large-scale agro-investments. After many scholars cautioned on potential land-grabbing cases (Sulle 2020), his successor, President Magufuli (2015-2021), discontinued SAGCOT and instead sought to transit the national economy from agriculture to industrialization through new mega-infrastructures.

Qualitative empirical research in the Kilombero Valley, Morogoro Region, in 2018/19 shows that both state visions had multiple effects on the Tanzanian land question. Both envision the transformation of the agrarian sector, but neither includes rural residents in decision-making. The construction of the mega-dam Stiegler's Gorge in the Selous has led to more tenure insecurity, landlessness and evictions in the Kilombero Valley, that is located about 100 kilometers upstream. Through newly set beacons (which mark the border between protected land and village land) many thousand peasants, smallholder farmers and (agro)pastoralists have (partially) lost their access to land. Under Magufuli, the politicization of land and water increased further, as the national developement interests (electricity production) rivals local interests (rural livelihoods). In a Gramscian Political Ecology sense, I conceptualize both the SAGCOT and the Stiegler's Gorge as 'hegemonic future grabbing'.

Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the able-body bias inherent in the ‘labour turn’ of customary land tenure in the vanilla-growing SAVA region of Madagascar. It argues to achieve transformation, there is a need to scrutinize underlying values and principles shaping customary land systems before integrating them.

Paper long abstract:

Across rural sub-Saharan Africa, land is central to livelihood and the general well-being of people. Land, notwithstanding, remains unevenly distributed and managed within pluralistic legal systems of varying constellations of statutory and customary land tenure arrangements. When combined with the increasing pressures on land resources, and conflicts, attention turns to the need for land tenure reform. The neoliberal agenda driving land reform allows for the current hybrid (statutory and customary) land reform policy approaches observed on the continent. While policymakers may regard this as a step forward, customary land tenure systems themselves can be socially unjust. Whitehead and Tsikata (2003) raised the question: what do we know about how customary land tenure systems actually work, and their ability to contribute to more just land tenure regimes under the current integrative policy modus?

Using qualitative interview data from rural residents in the vanilla-growing SAVA region of Madagascar, this paper argues that to achieve transformative land tenure systems in sub-Saharan Africa, there is a need to scrutinize underlying values and principles shaping customary land systems, improve on them, and leverage their adaptive character. Highlighted here, are the underlying able-body bias inherent in the ‘labour turn’ that encapsulates everyday meanings and ideas about land in Madagascar NE SAVA region. These notions risk, alongside all the challenges of the statutory tenure, securing land access and security at the expense of disadvantaged groups. “Able-bodyness” in this view is an intersectional, as well as, a multi-dimensional category consisting of time, place and body elements.

Paper short abstract:

Multiple intersecting patterns of (forced) mobility in Africa call for a re-imagination of land governance approaches designed for stable situations. What can we learn from emerging experiences with competing land claims deriving from displacement and return in the Great Lakes region and the Horn?

Paper long abstract:

African land futures are imagined and negotiated in settings marked by multiple and intersecting patterns of economic, historical, and conflict-induced mobility. Formal land governance approaches, designed for stable situations, are limited when it comes to dealing with competing claims deriving from displacement and return. Working out fair and inclusive arrangements that do justice to both displaced and onstaying populations is hugely challenging. This paper aims to contribute to the necessary re-imagination of land governance by drawing on emerging experiences in settings marked by displacement in Africa's Great Lakes region and the Horn. We examine what local arrangements have come up to deal with challenges on the ground and how these have interacted with emergency interventions and state land policy and to what effect. We read these experiences not only in a register of 'competing land claims' but also in a register of the 'envisioning of possible futures'. With this, we aim to scope future avenues for inclusive land governance in conflict-affected settings. The paper is based on ongoing work on land, conflict, and displacement in the Great Lakes region and the Horn (with an emphasis on Burundi and Somalia).

Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at the impact of titling and electrification on rural livelihoods in four regions of Tanzania (Manyara, Mbeya, Dodoma and Kigoma) across two waves of sampling (2027 households in Wave 1; 761 households in Wave 2) conducted between 2010-2021.

Paper long abstract:

According to the World Bank, by 2050 70% of the world’s population will live in cities. Fragmentation of rural land holdings, subdivided for distribution to new generations, means smaller holdings, less viable livelihoods and increasing rural-urban migration. The European Union, World Bank, USAID and other donors have spent enormous amounts on rural land titling in an effort to increase rural land values and markets, increase land security, and improve rural livelihoods. In addition, governments, seeking to fulfill commitments to SDG 7 ensuring energy access for all, are extending national electric grids throughout rural areas also in the interest of improving rural livelihoods. This paper looks at the impact of titling and electrification on rural livelihoods in four regions of Tanzania (Manyara, Mbeya, Dodoma and Kigoma) across two waves of sampling (2027 households in Wave 1; 761 households in Wave 2) conducted between 2010-2021. We find that electricity connectivity increased greatly in our study villages over time, growing from 4.6 percent of Wave 1 households to 43.5 percent of Wave 2 households. In contrast, titling had reached 6.6 percent of Wave One households, increasing only slightly to 10 percent of Wave 2 households. We examine whether electricity connectivity and titling, given other variables, correlate with higher income. We also consider whether increased income across the two waves is related to gain in connectivity and gain in titling. The findings shed light on the benefits (or lack thereof) of investments in titling and energy access for rural residents.

Paper short abstract:

The paper outlines a comparative appraisal of land acquisitions for large-scale agro-investments in rural Tanzania and Uganda, which were scaled back, stalled or cancelled. It conceptualizes the implications of such land deals on future land access and use for rural smallholders and herders.

Paper long abstract:

The literature on land acquisition for large investments in rural Africa has exploded in recent years. Such investments have proven key in land commodification and in (re)-shaping land control in rural settings. There are still, however, relatively few studies discussing their longer-term implications for future land access and use for smallholder farmers and herders. This paper outlines a comparative appraisal of such land acquisition processes in rural Tanzania and Uganda, with a particular focus on acquisitions for large-scale agro-investments that have not progressed as planned: Despite differences in land tenure regimes, Tanzania and Uganda both display large numbers of agro-investments that have been scaled back, stalled or cancelled. This high degree of “failure” stands in stark contrast to development narratives of grand opportunities brought by these investments. Importantly, not only operational investments, but also cancelled ones appear to have long-lasting, sometimes irreversible, implications on land access and use for rural smallholders and herders, in an environment of growing land scarcity for not least the younger generation.

In order to conceptualize future land access and use in rural East Africa, the paper builds on two interrelated strands; i) the diverse investment processes and practices and their implications for, for instance, land use patterns, land concentration and social relations and ii) a mapping of national and global power configurations and legal and political frameworks related to land use. The paper discusses how these two strands are profound in shaping future pathways of land access and use in rural East Africa.