Land Tenure in 21st Century Africa – The Contested Cultural Heritage of Our Ancestors

Land in Africa has never been merely an economic asset. In most African societies it is the dwelling place of the ancestors, the site of graves and shrines, the basis of lineage identity and the medium through which belonging, authority and the obligations of the living to the dead are expressed. The article draws on secondary data analysis of peer-reviewed journal articles, books and policy documents, with particular reference to southern Africa and east Africa to examine how this cultural heritage has come into contention in the twenty-first century. Afrocentricity provides the theoretical lens of the article. The analysis reveals four themes: colonial dispossession and the invention of customary tenure; post-colonial land reform and the politics of ancestral return; titling, land markets and the twenty-first-century land rush; and contested custodianship involving chiefs, women and youth. Sociological and anthropological readings show that land struggles are struggles over heritage, belonging and authority as much as over property. The article argues that the dominant policy dichotomy between ‘customary’ and ‘modern’ tenure misrepresents both, since customary tenure is neither timeless nor an obstacle to be dissolved into markets. It concludes by recommending legal recognition of customary rights as property rights, democratic community land governance, protection of women’s and youth rights, protection of graves and sacred sites, and free, prior and informed consent for large-scale land acquisitions.

Land tenure; customary land; ancestors; land reform; land grabbing; Afrocentricity; Africa

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