Overview

Written by a scholar-practitioner with over four decades of experience, this book is an accessible introduction to land tenure and its implications for African development. The book carries a clear warning: intensifying conflict over land across Africa is not the growing pains of a positive evolution in land tenure, but a problem that can only get worse without the state’s recognition of customary tenure systems when undertaking tenure reform. The author reviews Africa’s experience of evolution in customary land tenure and the often-difficult experience of the new nation in land tenure reform, including the failure to prevent further loss of land by rural populations and the unwitting contribution of some reform elements to that loss. The book has a broad reach across many countries in Africa and many different types of land, including farmland, pastures and rangelands, and forests. It is complemented by insights from a variety of disciplines to provide an accessible but nuanced introduction to a topic not well understood even in some development circles. While it focuses on Africa, the book is highly relevant to many countries of the developing world that have a common heritage of colonialism and dualistic systems of land tenure. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners wanting to understand the role of law and land tenure in African development.

Full Product Details

Author:   John W. Bruce
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Weight:   0.610kg
ISBN:  

9781032759692

ISBN 10:   1032759690
Pages:   300
Publication Date:   04 February 2026
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

Introduction Part I. Property Rights and Land Tenure 1. Property Rights and Land Tenure 2. The State’s System of Statutory Rights 3. Customary Land Tenure 4. Legal and Economic Dualism Part II. Change in Land Use and Land Tenure 5. Farmland 6. Pastures and Rangeland 7. Forests and Trees 8. Other Land and Natural Resources “Beyond the Village” 9. Change, Evolution and Reform Part III. Land Tenure Reform Introduction 10. Indigenous Land Tenure Reform: Mahago-Elibat c. 1898 11. Land Reform in Africa 12. Ownership and Alienability Reforms in Kenya 13. Individualization to a State-Granted Use Right: Senegal and Nigeria 14. More Recent Individualization to Use Rights: Rwanda, Cote d’Ivoire and Ethiopia 15. Confirmation Reforms that Recognize Custom as a Base Tenure: Ghana, Uganda and Liberia 16. Conversion from Customary to Statutory Community-Based Systems: Botswana, Tanzania and Mozambique 17. Reforms to Improve Women’s Land Access and Tenure 18. Assessing Land Tenure Reform Part IV. Land Tenure Futures 19. Conclusions

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Author Information

John W. Bruce is a scholar-practitioner who has worked on land policy and law in developing countries for over 50 years. He served as a Peace Corps Volunteer legal advisor to the Ministry of Land Reform in Ethiopia and has worked for the Ford Foundation in Sudan and the World Bank, where he served as Senior Counsel and Senior Land Tenure Specialist for the Rural Development Department. He holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was later African Program Coordinator, and then Director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Land Tenure Center, an interdisciplinary center of excellence on land tenure in the Global South.

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