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Land tenure and Resource Access in West Africa Programme
An ethnographic study of issues of land rights, property regimes, and ethnicity in West Africa. Focusing on an area of the savannah in northern Ghana and southwestern Burkina Faso, Land, Mobility, and Belonging in West Africa explores how rural populations have secured, contested, and negotiated access to land and how they have organized their communities despite being constantly on the move as farmers or migrant laborers. Carola Lentz seeks to understand how those who claim native status hold sway over others who are perceived to have come later. As conflicts over land, agriculture, and labor have multiplied in Africa, Lentz shows how politics and power play decisive roles in determining access to scarce resources and in changing notions of who belongs and who is a stranger. “Illuminates the distinctive historical trajectory of land claims, authority, and belonging among the Dagara and Sisala peoples of the Black Volta region, and locates this specific case history within broader debates over transformation in access, use, and control over land in colonial and postcolonial Africa.” —Sara Berry, Johns Hopkins University “Important in the sense that it constitutes a detailed historical study of how complex narratives of belonging and notions of property interlock. . . . It is academic work of the first order.” —Christian Lund, Roskilde University
Recognizing that land rights are ambiguous, negotiable and politically embedded, these case studies explore the long-term processes and recent changes in contemporary rural West Africa affecting the conversion of control over land into social and political capital and vice versa. They point to the colonial origins of what came to be viewed as ‘customary’ tenure and to the legal pluralism characterizing pre-colonial tenure arrangements. Furthermore, they show the spiritual and ritual importance of land that can be converted into political power and economic prerogatives, a dimension neglected by much of the recent literature. Analyses cover forest and savannah, state and segmentary societies, facilitating comparison and insights across the Anglo-Francophone divide.
While Africa is too often regarded as lying on the periphery of the global political arena, this is not the case. African nations have played an important historical role in world affairs. It is with this understanding that the authors in this volume set out upon researching and writing their chapters, making an important collective contribution to our understanding of modern Africa. Taken as a whole, the chapters represent the range of research in African development, and fully tie this development to the global political economy. African nations play significant roles in world politics, both as nations influenced by the ebbs and flows of the global economy and by the international political system, but also as actors, directly influencing politics and economics. It is only through an understanding of both the history and present place of Africa in global affairs that we can begin to assess the way forward for future development.
This collection of articles aims to stimulate the exploration of African initiative and creativity and to go beyond immediate socio-economic and political circumstances by analyzing those initiatives that offer alternatives to the prevailing paradigms. It moves away from African ‘victimhood’ by stressing African ‘agency’ and by demonstrating that societies in Africa have always showed the ability to negotiate whatever constraining ecological, economic and political circumstances they faced. This is further detailed in the context of the literary contest between local and global; of issues of land rights and property; of livelihoods and poverty; of the popular culture; of demystifying African migrations; the changing parameters of territoriality; and the dynamics of the tourist encounter.
This book is the first systematic attempt to address emerging land markets and their implications for poverty, equity, and efficiency across a number of African countries. The high incidence of poverty and the need for increased agricultural productivity remain acute in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa, where a lack of secure land rights and a growing scarcity of land relative to the size of the population are becoming increasingly critical issues. Indeed, land issues in the region are high on the international policy agenda. Yet our knowledge about land tenure security and other rural factor markets (such as labor, oxen, manure, purchased inputs, and credit) is far from adequate to formulate sensible policies. The case studies in the book show that, while land markets and especially informal markets have been rapidly emerging in densely populated parts of Africa - and have generally been to the benefit of the poor--their functions remain imperfect. This is due to policy-induced tenure insecurity and the fragmentation of agricultural land. Applying rigorous quantitative analyses, the book provides a basis for taking into account the role of land markets in national land policies. All too often, the authors argue, land policies have been extreme, either prohibiting all land transactions or giving unrestricted freehold rights to a small elite at the expense of the poor. From the long experience in Asia, it is known that such policies are detrimental to both production efficiency and equity of land use. The authors argue that future policies in Africa should work with the markets. Regulations should be imposed only with careful testing that they are having the intended effects. The Emergence of Land Markets in Africa is a resource for teaching in developed and developing countries, as it provides both comprehensive reviews of the literature and detailed case studies. It is intended to facilitate the dialogue between researchers and policymakers, as well as inspire researchers to go further in their investigations and build an even stronger basis for good policies. The Emergence of Land Markets in Africa is the first publication in the new Environment for Development (EfD) book series. EfD books focus on research and applications in environmental and natural resource economics as they are relevant to poverty reduction and environmental problems in developing countries. The EfD book series is part of the EfD initiative. (www.environmentfordevelopment.org)
West African Worlds provides a critical assessment of social, economic and political change in Africa’s most populous and arguably most externally focused region. With an emphasis on globalisation and modernisation, case studies and commentary are integrated throughout to highlight the concerns and issues of the region. Enriched by an impressive mix of West African voices, this text combines theory and application with policy and practice to address socio-economic change, the pursuit of livelihoods, and development within West Africa.