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Land tenure reform in Africa: a shift to the defensive

London, UK, robert{at}smith7977.freeserve.co.uk

Land tenure reform has been advocated as an instrument of development in sub-Saharan Africa since before Independence, based on a neoclassical economic model promising greater agricultural productivity as a result of titling. This in turn, it was suggested, would promote land investments, credit supply and efficient land markets. Titling policies were justified in the 1980s by evidence from southeast Asia, particularly Thailand. However, empirical studies in Africa have largely failed to find any of the promised positive effects; indeed they have revealed negative effects of titling policies, especially by worsening the tenure insecurity of poor farmers whom such policies should have helped. In the last decade the discourse of land tenure reform in Africa has departed from promises of increased incomes and shifted to a conservative, defensive stance, focused on preserving livelihoods against élite predation. This paper explores why the neoclassical model has not borne fruit in sub-Saharan Africa, describes inherent weaknesses in the model as applied to the African context and suggests methods by which the model could be better tested before dismissing entirely the use of tenure reform as an instrument against poverty.

Key Words: agricultural productivity • governance • land tenure • poverty reduction • rural development • sub-Saharan Africa

Progress in Development Studies, Vol. 3, No. 3, 210-222 (2003)
DOI: 10.1191/1464993403ps062oa


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