This empirically grounded study provides a critical reflection on the land question in Africa, research on which tends to be tangential, conceptually loose and generally inadequate. It argues that the most pressing research concern must be to understand the precise nature of the African land question, its land reforms and their effects on development. To unravel the roots of land conflicts in Africa requires thorough understanding of the complex social and political contradictions which have ensued from colonial and post-colonial land policies, as well as from Africa's 'development' and capital accumulation trajectories, especially with regard to the land rights of the continent's poor. The study thus questions the capacity of emerging neo-liberal economic and political regimes in Africa to deliver land reforms which address growing inequality and poverty. It equally questions the understanding of the nature of popular demands for land reforms by African states, and their ability to address these demands under the current global political and economic structures dictated by neo-liberalism and its narrow regime of ownership. The study invites scholars and policy makers to creatively draw on the specific historical trajectories and contemporary expression of the land and agrarian questions in Africa, to enrich both theory and practice on land in Africa.
Sam Moyo
ISBN : 2-86978-202-0
CODESRIA 2008
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This working paper is an attempt to construct an approach to the analysis of political disorder (in the sense of partial or total obliteration of instituted order) in which territorial elements could be seen as keys for interpretation. The goal is to contribute to the development of conceptual tools adequate for use in interpretation. This paper challenges certain familiar concepts such as that of the border, as well as other concepts which are beginning to become familiar, such as the concept of the « Terroir », and it advances new concepts, notably those of territorial dissidence and imagined territory whose heuristic possibilities may be greater.
Michel Ben Arrous
ISBN: 0850-2633
CODESRIA 1996