The Impact Of Land Tenure Reform On Crop Production In Africa

Since independence, to some extent, most African countries took a lot of measures to conduct land tenure reform. The major problem that African countries encounter is the conflict between the customary land rights, inherited from ancient times and modern land laws introduced by western settlers. The dual land tenure system resulted in vagueness in land rights and harmed crop production. This paper summarized and analyzed the reform measures in 32 African countries: Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Mali, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Benin, Niger, Nigeria, Zambia, Angola, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, Botswana, Nambia, South Africa, Swaziland, Lesotho, Madagascar, Egypt, Sudan (South Sudan), Libya, Tunis and Algeria. The analysis showed decentralization, recognition of a certain land tenure system, land registration procedure and development of land markets are four main measures applied in land tenure reform in African countries. Besides, this paper also referred to land redistribution, a project undertaken in some areas. Decentralization means endowing land management rights to local districts. Local officials are more familiar with local conditions; therefore, it is much easier for local bureau to conduct land management, land registration and settle land disputes. The recognition of a certain land tenure system contains nationalization, privatization of land and the recognition of customary land rights. Land registration formalizes the relationship between farmers and land, clarifies the land rights and generates a sense of security. Land market reform mainly refers to the stimulation of land market. By allowing free transfer and sales of land, land can fully display its role of obtaining capitals as credit and further promote agricultural investment. In strict sense, land redistribution does not belong to tenure reform. We gave it a qualitative description here since it was conducted in some areas. The several kinds of tenure reform are all related to the political, economic, and cultural background of African countries. Since independence, a lot of African countries have conducted land registration, a legacy from the colonial period. However, this kind of reform failed due to its extremely complex procedures and expensive fees. Then, African countries began to recognize the role of customary rights, thus stimulating the emergence of decentralization.Limited by access of data, this paper set the time span between 1980 and 2011. By applying the data analyzing software STATA, we conducted panel analysis about impacts of decentralization, recognition of a certain land tenure system and land registration on crop production both on whole African level and regional level. Results showed that decentralization and recognition of a certain land tenure system had a positive impact on crop production at the whole African level, with the impact of decentralization being 22.11% and the impact of recognizing a certain land tenure system being 10.01%. At the regional level, decentralization had a positive impact of 5.91% and 22.90% on crop production in eastern and southern Africa, while a negative impact of -5.45% in western Africa. With regards to the recognition of a certain land tenure system, privatization and the recognition of the customary rights had a positive impact of 5.88% and 5.73%, while nationalization was detrimental. The impact of land registration was also quite positive, reaching 23.09%.Different counties obtained different results in their exploration of land tenure reform. Some countries failed due to political conflicts, low transparency, little publicity, weak government enforcement and lack of capita; while some counties succeeded due to participation of the public, strong government enforcement and some other reasons. Limited by the agricultural condition in Africa, the incentive role of land tenure reform has not been fully displayed. Besides, a single kind of land tenure reform is always insufficient. The combination of various kinds of land tenure reform and the improvement of agricultural conditions are major orientation African countries should forge ahead in the future.