Land consolidation for sub-saharan's customary lands : the need for responsible approaches
Kwabena Asiama, Rohan Bennett & Jaap Zevenbergen
This paper explores the potential of land consolidation for dealing with land fragmentation in Sub-Saharan Africa?s (SSA) customary areas ? where the intention is to increase food productivity. In SSA?s customary areas, the use of mechanized farming technology and intensive farming techniques have largely failed to increase food productivity. This is despite foreign investment and the interest of the farmers to do so. In many cases, neither the farm parcel structure nor the land tenure arrangements support the use of, or investment in, mechanized equipment. This implies a strong need to deal with the land fragmentation situation. Although land consolidation is argued as an effective response to land fragmentation; its application in SSA?s customary areas has either not been successful, or it has ended up breaking down the customary land tenure arrangements. We argue that past attempts at land consolidation in SSA?s customary areas have failed mainly due to the transfer of European strategies without adequate consideration for the local factors in the planning and implementation, as well as inadequate land information. On the first issue, land consolidation strategies in Europe have shown that responsible approaches continually considered the changing local factors. There has been a recent push for more responsible approaches to land reform and planning activities that consider social, cultural, and economic factors that were previously not considered. On the second issue, one of the basic requirements for land consolidation is a well-functioning land administration system, however, the majority of lands in SSA lack this. The registration of customary land tenure rights has been attempted in many ways, however, the approaches usually do not support subsequent land consolidation activities. The need for new methods of recording land rights has led to suggestions about the potential of adopting crowdsourcing techniques ? using trusted intermediaries ? that has been termed as Participatory Land Administration.
Event: Symposium on Land Consolidation and Readjustment for Sustainable Development
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