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- Convenors:
-
Frankline Ndi
(Bonn University)
Conrad Schetter (Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies (BICC))
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- Format:
- Panel
- Streams:
- Environment and Geography (x) Violence and Conflict Resolution (y)
- Location:
- Philosophikum, S58
- Sessions:
- Saturday 3 June, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
Across Africa, communities, governments, and investors are competing for resources and land. This competition in turn generates conflicts in disparate forms. We invite contributions that critically engage discussions around land, land acquisition and conflicts in Africa.
Long Abstract:
Across Africa, communities, governments, and investors are competing for resources and land. This competition in turn generates conflicts in disparate forms. Land contestations are embedded in discourses, which legitimize land claims by referring to different sources, such as indigeneity, ethnicity, efficiency, or biodiversity. In addition, many rural communities draw their land rights from customary tenure, which are not fully recognized by formal statutory land institutions. In contrast, governments legitimate claims based on existing legal provisions and land institutions. These justifications of land claims and contestations in tenure arrangements have provoked wider debates about the future of rural Africa characterized by increasing land conflicts, but more so because the majority of people in rural areas depends on land for their livelihood. In the light of this debate, many governments have revisited their land tenure systems and initiated land reforms (e.g. through formalization, titling, redistribution etc.). These reforms often enough threaten rural livelihoods, the legal recognition of customary land use systems, and lead to accumulation by dispossession, and consequently, to (violent) conflicts. We invite contributions that critically engage discussions around land conflicts in Africa focusing on any of the following themes.
- Role of the state, non-state actors and institutions (statutory and customary) in land governance, negotiation and conflict management,
- Drivers of land-related conflicts,
- Claim-making discourses
- Power dynamics amongst competing land users/claimants,
- Land reforms and conflicts,
- Conflict management mechanisms.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Saturday 3 June, 2023, -Paper short abstract:
Land tenure in the drylands of Kenya and Uganda is undergoing rapid change. This paper analyses how communal land reform alongside rising individualisation and privatisation of land are contested among various actors. It seeks to provide pathways to 'good' resource governance.
Paper long abstract:
Land tenure and resource governance in the drylands of Kenya and Uganda are undergoing rapid change. Land reform and increasing pressures on dryland resources from various sources are resulting in different forms of boundary-making, the fragmentation of pastoralist areas and conflict between various actors. The region’s resources are being revalued with the rise of mining, energy extraction, conservation, and infrastructure projects. In addition to these often-externally driven pressures on land, people from the region are increasingly individualizing and privatising land for a variety of reasons, including speculation and agricultural innovation. At the same time, land reforms in Kenya and Uganda are encouraging pastoralists to secure communal land through demarcation and registration. These various forms of boundary-making are re-drawing the nature of Kenyan and Ugandan drylands in terms of land and resource rights, access and management. Based on an interdisciplinary research project ongoing in West Pokot and Turkana Counties (Kenya), and Moroto and Napak Districts (Uganda) (https://www.slu.se/en/collaboration/international/slu-global/triple-l/projects/drylands-transform/), this paper asks, how are processes of boundary-making and resource governance institutions contested within and between communities, and between communities and various state and non-state actors? What are the power relations between different actors? And what are the pathways toward ‘good’ resource governance? The paper uses a political ecology approach to address these questions and theorise processes of boundary-making.
Paper short abstract:
Land conflicts between pastoralists and farmers in Tanzania's Kilosa and Mvomero districts have been a persistent problem, leading to loss of life, property, and resources for both groups. This paper proposes to explore strategies and best practices for resolving these conflicts.
Paper long abstract:
This paper proposes to explore strategies and best practices for resolving land conflicts between pastoralists and farmers in Tanzania's Kilosa and Mvomero districts. The research will be conducted through a combination of literature review and fieldwork, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. The literature review will examine existing studies on land conflicts in Tanzania and other African countries, as well as strategies and best practices for resolving them. The fieldwork will consist of interviews with key stakeholders in the Kilosa and Mvomero districts, including pastoralists, farmers, government officials, and NGOs, and a survey will be conducted to gather data on land use and conflicts. The data will be analyzed using statistical techniques and content analysis. The findings will be used to identify key factors contributing to the land conflicts and explore potential solutions. The proposed strategies and best practices will be evaluated based on their effectiveness, feasibility, and potential for scalability. The paper will also recommend future research directions that can further deepen the understanding of land conflicts and its resolution in the region.
Paper short abstract:
Mistrust, community resilience and the specter of violence: IDPs and Host Communities relations in Nampula and Cabo Delgado - Mozambique as potential cause of intra communities' conflicts.
Paper long abstract:
Mozambique has currently about 946,508 so-called IDPs (Internally Displaced People) in northern Mozambique (Nampula, Niassa and Cabo Delgado, were where thousands of people moved during the last five years of conflict. The influx of IDPs, most of them vulnerable and without the possibility to establish adequate living conditions, generates considerable friction with the already existing communities. Partially, such conflict derives from cultural, ethnic, and religious differences, as well as reflecting non-existent job opportunities and land scarcity. In this article we draw on fieldwork as well as written and digital material to focus on two contested domains within this situation:
First, we map how such frictions arise, paying particular attention to a commonly held view among the residents that the IDPs are being favorably treated by the humanitarian agencies—particularly providing these with opportunities for education, food, and health services.
Second, we also map how the issue of land scarcity exacerbate and compromise potential peaceful coexistence between displaced and host communities, particularly mapping how host communities refuse to give up part of their land to displaced families, with the suspicion that they will not return to their areas of origin and, thus, casting the IDPs as not belonging to the area.
Building on the mapping of these domains, we draw on contemporary work within African studies and social sciences on (mis)trust, suspicion and belonging to 1) analyze and gauge the resilience of these communities in relation to potential instances of intra-community violence, tense situation.
Paper short abstract:
In the context of large-scale land acquisitions, this paper explores the framing of social mobilization around two land projects in Mozambique. Findings suggest that shared diagnostic and motivational frames boost cooperation, while prognostic frames vary due to heterogeneous ideological grounds.
Paper long abstract:
Large-scale land acquisitions (LSLA) have the potential to overthrow existing production patterns in rural areas substantially. Research on this topic showed that such projects often bear social, environmental, and economic risks. As a result, local, national, and transnational social mobilizations against LSLAs occurs frequently to counter these threats. Social movements countering such LSLA are heterogeneous and thus use diverse frames to address land projects.
Building on social movement literature, the paper investigates how social mobilization unfolds around LSLA. The empirical qualitative data derives from fieldwork of resistance to two large-scale agricultural projects in Mozambique: The first is the Wanbao project run by a Chinese private company, and the second is the ProSavana project, a trilateral development cooperation between Mozambique, Brazil, and Japan.
Based on a comparative research design, the paper explores the strategies of social movements around these projects. It shows how activists form various diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational frames. The research indicates that the different actors share a common diagnostic and motivational framing and thus form coalitions to challenge large-scale land projects. Yet the prognostic framing is heterogeneous among the actors involved, mainly due to diverse ideological understandings of economic systems and development approaches.
Paper short abstract:
This paper addresses the intra-family dynamics of land exclusion in an area of western Uganda near a plantation with a large outgrower programme, investigating the complex interactions between agricultural technopolitics, gender, and bodily-mental disadvantage.
Paper long abstract:
‘Land-grabbing’ is a huge public concern in Uganda, but many of the dynamics are poorly understood. This is particularly true for cases involving people whose body-minds are socially marked as atypical, who tend to face exclusion on a micro scale within the family, because scholarship and the media focus on the most spectacular, community-level events. In this paper, I address the intra-family dynamics of land exclusion in an area of western Uganda near a plantation with a large outgrower programme, investigating the complex interactions between agricultural technopolitics, gender, and particular bodily-mental features. Using case studies of several self-proclaimed disabled people who have histories of land loss, I investigate the language and actions they and their antagonists employ to forward their claims to land access. I identify two diverging discourses used to talk about bodily-mental disadvantage, typified by the words ‘obulema’ [disability] and ‘abaceke’ [weak people], and trace their differential distribution and consequences in land disputes.
Paper short abstract:
The indigenous Khoisan feel left out of state-led land reform in South Africa and some have recently ‘reclaimed’ land illegally. By examining the occupiers’ motivations and interactions with neighbours and officials, I reconceptualize their occupation as an attempt at land reform from below.
Paper long abstract:
In November 2020, about a dozen people identifying as Khoisan—South Africa’s unrecognized indigenous people—illegally moved onto a large area of state-owned land near Grabouw in the Western Cape. They argued that “Knoflookskraal” belonged to their ancestors and that their land claims were unjustly left out of the official land reform program, which only investigates dispossessions that occurred after 1913. Thousands of people have since joined the ‘reclaim’. This influx of people with varying political agendas and socioeconomic backgrounds has helped stave off eviction, but it has also created friction with neighboring farmers, local politicians, rival Khoisan groups, and government officials. Drawing on data collected during ethnographic fieldwork, I examine these tensions and conflicts, as well as the various arguments that Khoisan activists put forward to bolster their claim to the land. Rather than a land ‘invasion’, I argue that Knoflokskraal is scrutinized more productively as an attempt to carry out land reform ‘from below’; deliberately aimed at state-owned land and borne out of decades of frustration with the lack of affordable housing and with government policies that fail to remedy Khoisan marginalization. The jurisdictional ambiguity inherent in the occupation creates lawlessness. However, the mixed response to Knoflokskraal by non-Khoisan stakeholders suggests that the absence of the bureaucratic red tape of state-led land reform also leaves room for improvised mutually beneficial settlements. Land reform from below should therefore be explored more extensively as a potential way of breaking the current impasse in South African land reform.
Paper short abstract:
In rural villages along the Burkina Faso-Mali border land conflicts come in diverse forms and are caused by many drivers, but all play a large role in rural life. The customary mechanism of land conflict resolution is still preferred over formal rules that are viewed as slow, complex and corrupted.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines formal and informal methods of managing land conflicts in rural communities along the Burkina Faso-Mali border. Data collection assessed the most common disputes and conflict resolution mechanisms in the study areas through: 1) a large-N survey to investigate common conflict types; 2) key informant interviews with community gatekeepers, government workers and law enforcement officials (such as magistrates and prefects); and 3) focus group discussions with adult men and women from selected communities to assess their perceptions of land issues and behaviour in response to same.
The data reveal that land conflicts were the most common conflict-type in both Burkina Faso (47%) and Mali (46%). Dispute resolution mechanisms were generally customary, managed and implemented primarily by the village chief and the land chief. Respondents preferred the customary system for its focus on social cohesion. They avoid formal dispute resolution mechanisms and use them as a last resort when the customary system fails. Respondents saw the formal system as slow, fear-based, distant, complex and corrupt. They also see it as responsible for entrenching local level social conflict, even if it manages to reach a resolution with respect to a particular land dispute.
Though the customary and formal systems are currently pitted against one another, there is another model. As has been done in the former-tribal areas of Pakistan with the jirga system there, the state could preside over the customary system, ensuring basic fairness, while allowing that system to do what it does best: prevent conflict through long-lasting resolutions.