Chiefdoms and rural land management
Tembo, Emmanuel
Customary tenure has become accepted as a legitimate form of holding of rights in land in most African countries but the governance of this type of tenure is generally not fully explored. Africa south of the Sahara is faced with very high levels of poverty and land, despite its abundance is not used in the most efficient manner. Land if properly managed can unlock wealth to the communities but unfortunately this is not the case in sub-Saharan Africa. An average of 80% of land in Africa is under customary tenure and its governance has in the main continued to be rudimentary. This paper discusses the need to interrogate the current governance of customary tenure systems and suggests that just as nothing is constant governments together with communities should devise governance structures that would truly engender development in a sustainable way. The continual insistence on practices that are archaic and which do not bring about meaningful development to the poor in the rural areas should be discouraged. Africa can borrow from best practices elsewhere and combine with their traditional set-ups to establish land administration systems that can work. Lessons from Botswana suggest that it is possible to achieve this in the African setting as well.
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