Tenure Insecurity and the Continuum of Documentation in a Matrilineal Customary System
Helder Zavale, Laura Meinzen-Dick, Hosaena Ghebru
In this paper, we document patterns of land tenure insecurity in a matrilineal region of Mozambique. Using data from a survey of nearly two thousand agricultural households in two regions of Mozambique, we explore the gendered sources and covariates of tenure insecurity that stems either from private land disputes or collective expropriation (by government or large-scale land investors). We find that overall, nearly half of respondents report experiencing collective land tenure insecurity, as compared with only 11.5% reporting individual tenure insecurity. We further distinguish patterns between principal males, their female spouses, and principal females, finding that principal males feel the least secure about their collective and individual rights, a surprising finding compared with the majority of evidence from (patrilineal) Africa. Secondly, we make use of the fact that in several of the villages surveyed, the government carried out a variety of land rights documentation interventions, including a simple community delimitation, individual parcel demarcation, and full certification of rights. This continuum of documentation efforts allows us to see how well different interventions match the existing forms of tenure insecurity, and what is needed to address fears about losing land. Indeed, individuals in villages that received formal land certificates appear no more secure than those who merely had their rights demarcated in a less formal (and much less costly) process. Finally, we probe the heterogeneity in responses to documentation programs by gender and marital status, where it appears that men are most strongly impacted by government action. This paper fills a crucial gap, by empirically documenting gendered patterns of customary tenure and insecurity in a matrilineal system (15% of societies in Sub-Saharan Africa practice matrilineal kinship, according to the Ethnographic Atlas), as well as by contributing to a literature that aims to fit land rights documentation interventions to the needs of the community and most effectively enhance tenure security.
Event: World Bank Land Conference 2024 - Washington
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