The Law is to Blame
The Vulnerable Status of Common Property Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5083401 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Liz Alden Wily (0000-0001-7120-7066, Issues Research, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 733-757 |
| Publication date | 2011-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Development and Change (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0012-155X • E-ISSN: 1467-7660 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-7660.2011.01712.x |
| OpenAlex | W1894089216 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 125 |
| References cited | 15 |
The context of this article is the surge in large-scale land acquisitions of African lands by local and foreign investors for commercial food, livestock, oil palm and carbon trading purposes. Involuntary loss of rural lands at scale is not new to Africa's majority rural poor, nor is it driven by a single factor. Historically inequitable land relations within communities, compounded by a century of capitalist transformation, take their toll. This study argues, however, that the weak legal status of communal rights is the most pernicious enabler in their demise, allowing governments to take undue liberties with their citizens' lands, and particularly those which are unfarmed and by tradition held in common. While international acquiescence to abusive domestic law helps entrench the diminishment of majority land rights, the domestic laws themselves are principally at fault and necessarily the target for change. This legal vulnerability is explored here through an examination of more than twenty African land laws
Acquiescence · Agriculture · Common ownership · Demise · Development economics · Economics · Geography · Land grabbing · Land law · Land tenure · Political economy · Political science · Property rights · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Indigenous Peoples' Rights and Law · Land Rights and Reforms · Law
Widening and deepening
Community forests, timber production, and certification
Why Tenure Responsive Land-Use Planning Matters
Natural resource privatisation in Sub-Saharan Africa and the challenges for inclusive green growth
"Agrarian modernization through "ideal agricultural subjects
Community, commons, and degrowth at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage
Human Rights in Contemporary Society - Challenges From an International Perspective
The Global Food‐Energy‐Water Nexus
Incorporating Land Tenure Security into Conservation
Land tenure reforms, tenure security and food security in poor agrarian economies
Revisiting the Social Bedrock of Kinship and Descent in the Anthropology of Africa
Responding to land-based conflict in Ethiopia
Prédation et expropriation pour cause d’utilité publique au Cameroun
Property, Institutions, and Social Stratification in Africa
Agrarian reforms, urbanisation, and communities’ resistance to the grabbing of collective land. The case of Ahl Taroudant tribe
Custom, modernity, and stability of land rights in Ghana
Institutional resilience and land-related conflict governance
Heterogenous impacts of property rights on the climate-smart investments of farming households
Does community-based tenure prevent land grabbing? The oil palm case in Mexico
Social–ecological transformations towards sustainability in drylands
Project-induced displacement and resettlement
Indigenous Political Ecology
Planning by (mis)rule of laws
An extraversion affair
Resistance in spaces of triple exception
Performance of participatory forest management in Ethiopia
Threats to sustainable development posed by land and water grabbing
Democratic land control and human rights
Promoting land tenure security for sustainable peace — lessons on the politics of transformation
Virtual Parceling
Governing the Global Land Grab
The global food system, agro-industrialization and governance
Financialization, resistance, and the question of women’s land rights
Can the Law Secure Women's Rights to Land in Africa? Revisiting Tensions Between Culture and Land Commercialization
Localized land tenure registration in Burundi and eastern DR Congo
Scaling smallholder tree cover restoration across the tropics
Commons grabbing and agribusiness
Protection of Pastoralists’ Collective Land Rights in Tanzania
The geographic and sectoral patterns of large-scale farmland investments in sub-Saharan Africa
Consultation in Large-Scale Land Acquisitions
Contemporary Processes of Large-Scale Land Acquisition in Sub-Saharan Africa
Grabbed trust? The impact of large-scale land acquisitions on social trust in Africa
The Tragedy of the Grabbed Commons
Capitalist development and land struggles in Africa
Crop prices and the demand for titled land
Translating Legal Rights into Tenure Security
Politics of rural land acquisition in Africa
The sound of silence
Host country governance and the African land rush
Marginal land and the global land rush
Land Grabbing and the Axis of Political Conflicts
Challenges of Formal Land Education in Conflict Settings
Land reform and peacebuilding in Côte d'Ivoire
The Efficacy of Preserving Communal Tenure in South Africa
Understanding Land Grabs in Africa
Normative Pluralism and Socio-Environmental Vulnerability in Cameroon
Social safeguards and co-benefits in Redd
Participatory Land Governance in Mozambique
The Right to Self-Determination under the Ethiopian Constitution
A systematic review of the socio-economic impacts of large-scale tree plantations, worldwide
Land Grabbing, Investment Principles and Plural Legal Orders of Land Use
Gendered land rights, legal reform and social norms in the context of land fragmentation - A review of the literature for Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda
Gated communities and land administration challenges in Ghana
Trajectories of large-scale land acquisition dynamics in Angola
Exploring efficiency and equity in modes of land rights acquisition under customary tenure systems
Connecting smallholder farmers to local markets
Risks to the sanctity of community lands in Kenya. A critical assessment of new legislation with reference to forestlands
Property killed a peace park dream
Strengthening common property rights institutions in Liberia
Revolution and evolution in Ethiopian land tenure
The politics of the forest frontier
The ‘new’ African customary land tenure. Characteristic, features and policy implications of a new paradigm
Land, power and peace
Private investment as an engine of rural development
The glocal dynamics of land reform in natural resource sectors
Adapted institutional analysis and development framework for understanding customary land institutions in sub-Saharan Africa – A case study from Nigeria
Landguardism’ in Ghana
Water and land investment in the “overseas” of Northern Ghana
The implications of sugarcane contract farming on land rights, labor, and food security in the Bunyoro sub-region, Uganda
Conflicts and synergies between customary land use management and urban planning in informal settlements
Main intrinsic factors driving land grabbing in the African countries’ agro-food industry
Renegotiating customary tenure reform – Land governance reform and tenure security in Uganda
Can community-based land adjudication and registration improve household land tenure security? Evidence from Afghanistan
Contesting land rights in a post-conflict environment
Worldwide research trends on land tenure
The State of African Cities 2010
Battles over boundaries
Land conflicts
Green neoliberalism
Inverting the moral economy
Neo-collectivisation’ through property rights reforms
Colonial Rule and the Power of Chiefs over Land Resources
Does Land Quality Increase the Power of Traditional Leaders in Contemporary Africa
Legibility and External Investment
Roadblocks
Scrambling for the promised land
Forests and Food Security
When does the emergence of a stationary bandit lead to property insecurity
Shadow State and the making of informal territories
Precarious resettlement at the Bui Dam, Ghana-Unmaking the teleological
Africa works
Violence and Social Orders
Land Policies for Growth and Poverty Reduction
Community Rights, Conservation and Contested Land
A new map of global urban extent from Modis satellite data
Neopatrimonialism Revisited
Crime, Justice, and Underdevelopment
Tribal Innovators. Tswana Chiefs and Social Change 1795-1940
More Than Socially Embedded
The denied land rights of the indigenous peoples and their endangered livelihood and survival
| Unique citing works | 125 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 8,93 |
| Citation span | 2012 - 2026 (15) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 119 |