Land Tenure Systems and Their Impacts on Agricultural Investments and Productivity in Uganda

This article provides an empirical analysis of the impact of different tenure systems (mailo, customary, and public land) on agricultural investment and productivity in central Uganda. A major hypothesis tested is that land investments and practices may have both economic and tenure security implications. The results indicate that coffee planting is used by farmers to enhance tenure security, while fallowing is practised to a greater extent by farmers on more secure holdings. This supports the notion that farmers consider tenure implications when making investments and that different tenure systems do not inhibit the promotion of tree-planting investment. Tenure had no impact on the productivity of crop farming.     

Markets,War, and the Reconfiguration of Political Authority in Sierra Leone

Although Côte d'Ivoire recently emerged from a long period of protracted conflict, peace is indeed precarious. This is particularly the case in the country's western cocoa regions, where tensions between indigenous and migrant populations continue to pose a threat to Côte d'Ivoire's economic and political recovery. These tensions revolve around longstanding land disputes that culminated in violent attacks in the late 1990s, early 2000s and in the recent 2010–2011 post-election crisis. Using insights from field work in 2012 conducted in the cocoa regions, this article explores the issue of land tenure reform and politics in post-conflict Côte d'Ivoire. In so doing, it considers the legal and political dimensions of land tenure in the cocoa regions and the highly controversial 1998 land law. This provides the crucial context for analysing the historical and enduring nature of these disputes, the critical importance of land reform in contemporary Côte d'Ivoire and the relationship between the “land question” and peace at both local and national levels.     

Livestock and Private Tree Holdings in Rural Ethiopia: The Effects of Collective Action Institutions,Tenure Security and Market Access

This article uses househld panel data spanning the period 2000–2007 to test hypotheses from the literature that secure land tenure, market access and collective action promote accumulation of private capital assets in rural highland Ethiopia. The three natural capital assets analysed in the article, livestock, eucalyptus trees and non-eucalyptus trees on households’ farm plots, make up virtually 100 per cent of privately held disposable assets. Incomes and capital stocks are extremely low and constant and tree assets are at least as important as livestock. We find that collective action and secure land tenure have strong positive effects on accumulation of livestock and other trees, but not eucalyptus. We also find evidence that market access promotes eucalyptus holdings and that other types of wealth tend to be positively associated with private natural capital stocks.     

Searching for Livelihood Security: Land and Mobility in Burkina Faso

The incremental approach to land reform in sub-Saharan Africa constitutes a rapprochement between proponents of the introduction of private property regimes and their critics. The incrementalists recognise that local tenure regimes can change and that they should be the basis of any land-reform programme. This article argues that an important gap remains with regard to the dynamics of tenure arrangements observed in a highly insecure environment, because the incremental approach retains a western-type of tenure security as its ultimate goal. Geographic mobility of actors and fields is essential to the protection of livelihoods in the north-central region of Burkina Faso. This mobility not only is made possible by the prevailing land tenure regime but also underpins its flexibility and allows the merging and shifting of rights. All of this argues against the establishment of western-type tenure security and in favour of the maintenance of flexible resource tenure regimes - a model discussed in recent years in relation to pastoral land use in drylands. This would have the additional advantage of integrating understandings of, and approaches to, pastoralists' and crop-farmers' land use in regions where these population groups already intermingle.     

Polanyi's “Ports of Trade”: Salaga and Kano in the Nineteenth Century

This article explores the salient, often ignored, convergences between the discourses of colonizers and the colonized in Africa. Using Nigerian criticisms of British colonial handling of the Great Depression, and a similar critique of British colonial economic recovery measures penned by the British colonial statistician in Nigeria, S.M Jacob, the article contends that, in spite of stylistic and motivational differences, both sets of critics desired similar colonial reforms and were grounded in a common desire to compel British colonialism to fulfill its paternalistic promises to Nigerians during a time of economic crisis. The article argues that the two bodies of anti-colonial criticism wittingly or unwittingly sought to salvage the colonial enterprise by compelling the colonial state to avert public outrage that might threaten British rule. Although Nigerian critics recognized the imperative of eventual self-government, their critiques and those of Jacob were united in their common conviction that the best way to avert a further discrediting of British colonial rhetoric was for the state to provide relief to Nigeria's economically beleaguered peoples. Both sets of critics desired a colonial system that functioned effectively for the benefit of Nigerians, even if their motivation for desiring this outcome and their ultimate goals differed.     

The Role of Land Certification in Reducing Gaps in Productivity between Male- and Female-Owned Farms in Rural Ethiopia

This paper analyses the impact of a low-cost land certification programme on the productivity of female-headed households. The hypotheses tested in the paper emphasise on the interaction between the constraints that female-headed households face in terms of insecure land tenure, lack of productive resources and suboptimal land market participation, on the one hand, and the tenure security benefits of certification on the other. Our findings show that land certification has a positive effect on land market participation and productivity. Our analysis also suggests higher marginal effects of certification on female-headed households’ productivity, compared to the male ones.     

Large-scale land acquisitions,state authority and indigenous local communities: insights from Ethiopia

The convergence of diverse global factors – food price volatility, the increased demand for biofuels and feeds, climate change and the financialisation of commodity markets – has resulted in renewed interest in land resources, leading to a rapid expansion in the scope and scale of (trans)national acquisition of arable land across many developing countries. Much of this land is on peripheral indigenous peoples’ territories and considered a common property resource. Those most threatened are poor rural people with customary tenure systems – including indigenous ethnic minority groups, pastoralists and peasants – who need land most. In Ethiopia large areas have been leased to foreign and domestic capital for large-scale production of food and agrofuels, mainly in lowland regions where the state has historically had limited control. Much of the land offered is classified by the state and other elites as ‘unused’ or ‘underutilised’, overlooking the spatially extensive use of land in shifting cultivation and pastoralism. This threatens the land rights and livelihoods of ethnic minority indigenous communities in these lowlands. This article argues that recent large-scale land acquisitions are part of state strategy for enforcing political authority over territory and people. It examines the implications of such strategy for indigenous ethnic minority groups, focusing particularly on the Benishangul-Gumuz region.     

Analysis of the Technical Efficiency of the Programme of Modernisation of the Land Tenure Services in a Developing Country

ABSTRACT

This paper measures the technical efficiency of land tenure services in Cameroon. From the method of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), we decompose the efficiency of the land tenure administration into pure technical efficiency and technical efficiency of scale. The data used is for a period of 8 years and it is from MINDLT and CAHF (2018). We obtain the following results: i) - the land tenure administration of Cameroon is suboptimal. ii) - the inefficiency observed is mostly due to inefficiency of scale. The results suggest that the rational management of human resources intervenes in habilitation procedures, the reinforcement of human capacities and the introduction of innovating technologies in the registration of land certificates.     

Strategic change,leadership and accounting: A triptych of organizational reform

Strategic change in public sector organizations has been well documented. This article suggests that public management research would benefit from a greater appreciation of how calculative practices are deeply imbricated with, and constitutive of, organizational life. In turn, the article argues that the field of interdisciplinary accounting has much to learn from public administration, especially in terms of leadership. The overarching argument is that understanding strategic change in public organizations can be enhanced by bringing together insights from the academic fields of public administration and interdisciplinary accounting. In this respect, organizational reform can be understood as a triptych, involving strategic change, leadership and accounting practices. We illustrate this thesis through a case study of strategic change in the world's largest public service broadcaster—the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). It is shown how, during the tenure of one organizational leader—John Birt—accounting became pivotal to his leadership.     

Sara Baartman and Andries Stoffels: Violence,Law and the Politics of Spectacle in London and the Eastern Cape, 1809–1836

This article contrasts the well-known display of Sara Baartman, exhibited in London and Paris under the rubric the “Hottentot Venus,” with the 1835–36 visit to Britain for political ends of Andries Stoffels, a Khoekhoe Christian convert who testified before the House of Commons Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements). It places both visits in the context of legal reform and violence in the Cape Colony in the early nineteenth century. Both visits can be fruitfully re-read as reflecting South African struggles over control of the Khoekhoe body, the rule of colonial law, and emerging ideas of human rights. Baartman was displayed as an iconic body in a legal context in which (mostly white) masters coerced Khoekhoe labourers and claimed the right to control their bodies. Stoffels displayed himself as a Christian convert to eager evangelical audiences, in a context in which legal reform depended on the putative erasure of difference, even as racial tension persisted in significant ways. The article suggests that the history of human rights is closely tied to the history of colonialism. It also, however, argues that members of Baartman's community responded to, and fought, the conditions that led to her display and that Baartman should not be understood in isolation from that community.     

Hybrid land markets: monetarised customary land transactions in Zambia

This paper examines the growing trend of monetarised transactions of customary land in Zambia, and the impact of these dealings on customary land practices and norms. While transactions of customary land involving money are not a new phenomenon in many parts of Africa, including Zambia, the growing demand for land, especially in areas where land shortages are emerging, has led to a steady growth in these transactions, with the practice becoming more widespread. In the Zambian context, this is directly linked to the policy that allows customary land to be converted into leasehold tenure. Local elites, urban dwellers, and foreign investors are taking this opportunity to acquire customary land which they then convert to leasehold tenure. However, while these dealings have some features of a conventional market, they are, at the same time, bound up in local customary land norms. Although such transactions have been reported widely in the literature, there has been little analysis of their nature and the impact this is having on traditional land practices and norms. Drawing mainly from qualitative data, this paper examines the nature of these transactions and the effects they are having on customary land relations, practices and norms.     

Gender,Weather Shocks and Welfare: Evidence from Malawi

This paper explores the gender-differentiated effects of weather shocks on households’ welfare in Malawi using panel data aligned with climatic records. Results show that temperature shocks severely affect household welfare, reducing consumption, food consumption and daily caloric intake. The negative welfare effects are more severe for households where land is solely managed by women, a finding that sheds light on the gender-unequal impact of temperature shocks. Our evidence also suggests that women’s vulnerability to temperature shocks is linked to women’s land tenure security, as temperature shocks significantly impact women’s welfare only in patrilineal districts, where statistics show that investment in agricultural technologies is lower.     

Do land reforms have adverse impacts on the livelihoods of poor land users? Evidence from the Nkoranza South Municipality,Ghana

Poverty reduction is the overarching goal of most development interventions in the developing world. From 2004, Ghana has been implementing a land reform policy/programme that seeks to improve tenure security and reduce poverty. The present study uses qualitative methods to analyse the extent to which land reforms are enabling or inhibiting poor land users in Ghana to exit poverty and improve their living standards. The study finds that Ghana’s land reform system redefines customary land governance resulting in a breakdown of the trusteeship ethos of the chieftaincy institution, increasing land sales, insecurity of land tenure for the poor and disappearing commons. These factors subsequently have adverse impacts on the ability of poor people to meet their livelihood needs. The study concludes that, for land reforms to work proactively for the poor, they must be pursued as part of broader, holistic and integrated development initiatives.     

Custom and capitalism: Changes in the basis of land tenure in Ismani,Tanzania

Customary land tenure rules in Tanzania are incompatible with conditions of land shortage arising from agricultural development within an individual and incipiently capitalist framework. They are not equipped to deal with market land values, nor with individual demands which do not rest on a wider set of social obligations. Gross inequalities in land ownership are growing without controls because government policy has caused customary law to be retained for most rural land. In Ismani where agriculture is relatively developed, commercial land transactions are carried out secretly, and are consequently subject to cheating and insecurity. The only (still inadequate) means of securing title is by taking a dispute to court.     

Urbanization,rural land system and social security for migrants in China

Temporary migration due to lack of social security for migrants, rural land tenure insecurity due to frequent land reallocation and abusive land requisition due to lack of functioning land markets are all major policy challenges that China is facing in its yet-to-be finished economic transition. Although there have been intensive studies and various policy recommendations on these issues, most discussions have so far neglected the close interrelationships between these issues and have failed to analyse them in an integrated framework. The paper aims to establish such an analytical framework. By taking into account the impacts of China's characteristics, that is a large developing country in transition, on the country's migration and rural land policies, we propose a policy package to address these challenges in a holistic manner.     

Evangelical violence: Western Christianity and the use of force against the Third World

Abstract

Recognising the impact of religion on state action, this article identifies two variables that interact to affect the type and level of violence employed by Western states against Third World targets. First, variation in the degree to which the prominent Christian denominations and organisations within these states view evangelisation as either an individual-level or national-level process – Christian individualism vs Christian nationalism – has determined church support for using violence as a tactic. Second, the level of influence that churches and missionary organisations have over their home states affects the ability of Christian actors to directly impact state actions. Western violence against Third World peoples is expected to be lowest when churches and Christian organisations view evangelisation in primarily individualistic terms and have significant influence over the state. The article examines the relationships between concepts of evangelisation, Christian influence over state policies, and levels of violence against the Third World by examining British, French and German colonialism during the late colonial period of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.     

Can agricultural intensification help attain Sustainable Development Goals? Evidence from Africa and Asia

Market-oriented agricultural intensification is a major development strategy, yet its alignment with sustainable development goals (SDGs) is unclear. We apply indicators for SDG 2 (eradicate hunger) regarding income, food production, food security and land tenure to recent intensifications in Rwanda and Laos to reveal their disaggregated impacts. We find while market-oriented intensification may generate poverty reduction, it also exacerbated marginalisation and poverty through various forms of land tenure insecurity. Ethnicity and gender were influential factors in Rwanda, and post-conflict resettlement policies in Laos. We discuss implications for development practice and selection of suitable indicators to reflect the ambition of the SDGs.     

The Indian economic experiment

The aim of this paper is to study the effects of land tenure on agricultural production. This is an econometric study of production functions for the Ferozepur district of Punjab using Farm Management Studies data for 1968/69 and 1969/70. After a brief review of the theoretical literature, production functions are estimated to test for differences between small and large farms and for the relative inefficiency of tenants (on an inferior production function) relative to owners. We get slightly ambiguous results on the farm size issue but we find that the more land leased in by a farmer the less efficient he is.     

The case of the ‘other India’ and Indian ir scholarship

ir scholarship in India has focused on the borders, territory and sovereignty of the Indian state, overlooking the rich complexity of interior border formation between colonial and independent India. The paper argues that the study of the princely states under the British paramountcy (1858–1947), neglected so far, is valuable to ir scholarship on three grounds. First, in mapping colonial India’s engagement with the outside world, the focus has been solely on British India. The princes were equally participative and perceptive of the outside world. Second, the princely states represent yet another challenge to the Westphalian notion of sovereignty, demonstrating the limited capacity of European categories to understand the ‘non-West’. Third, incorporating the paramountcy system in the genealogy of sovereignty of the Indian subcontinent offers a fresh account of border construction inside the state.     

Translating Legal Rights into Tenure Security: Lessons from the New Commercial Pressures on Land in Ghana

Abstract

Since the confluence of the food and oil price crises of the mid 2000s, Ghana has become a prime destination for large-scale farmland investments. While this trend could make valuable contributions to an ailing agricultural sector, the alienation of rural land for commercial ends could conversely have far-reaching implications for customary land rights. Through an analysis of the legislation protecting customary land rights and governing such the alienation of those rights and by contrasting this with practice, this article highlights some of the fundamental challenges in translating legal rights into tenure security in contemporary Ghana. It shows that despite the legal recognition of customary land rights, in practice customary land users are ultimately responsible for contesting infringements upon these rights. With traditional authorities able to capture substantial rents from the alienation process and government institutions offering scant oversight as a result of fragmented responsibilities, capacity constraints, and political disincentive, the protection of customary land rights is becoming increasingly contingent on community ‘capacity to claim’. Since poor access to information, unrealistic expectations and deference to traditional authority tends to quell disputes over alienation, the limited mechanisms for protecting citizen access to resources gives reason to reconsider the importance of direct state involvement in the customary land domain.