Analyses two examples of changing institution-resource access relationships in Africa and Latin America. The Africa case (Kakamega, Western Kenya) highlights the resource endowments and problems associated with the participation of individuals in multiple institutions, whereas the Latin America…

Concentrates on the black smallholder farming sector. Policy objectives should include:Resource Conserving Technologies: re-orientation away from large scale farmers, consideration of goals other than high input/output (risk management, labour input, gender). More participatory methods in areas…

Discusses the debate around structural adjustment and African agriculture, the history of the Tanzanian cotton sector and farming systems in the main cotton growing area of the country before reporting the results of a small survey of cultivators carried out at the end of the 1997/8 seed cotton…

Appraises political liberalization and subsequent contestation over political space in Kenya. The discussion centres on how, from the colonial period, elite politics have precluded organization and crystallization of popular democracy.The paper specifically examines the historicity of political…

Tanzania’s well-known village establishment programme, which is called Ujamaa , allowed for the sedentarization of almost all rural residents in some 8 000 villages in the 1970s. The effective impact of villagization on land distribution may vary, but a general preference for individual…

The present land tenure situation in Uganda is essentially the result of four factors: customary tenure practices, the mailo tenure system introduced under the British colonial administration, the Land Reform Decree passed by Idi Amin’s government in 1975, and the disrupting social order under…

Over the years agricultural scientists and extension agents have asked themselves why farmers do not take steps to control soil erosion, especially where such measures would appear to be cost-effective. Several explanations have been put forward, but thus far insufficient attention has been…

These Country Profiles represent a new edition of a continent-wide set of profiles prepared and published by the Land Tenure Center in 1986. This new volume reflects a decade of intensive work on the continent by LTC and a very considerable deepening of knowledge and understanding of land tenure…

In Kenya and the sub-Saharan Africa generally, there have been little systematic discussions on the post-colonial struggles over control and ownership of land. Studies ignore that the "land question" is not about production alone and consequently have failed to assess its wider…

Examines the implications of the HIV epidemic for rural development policies and programmes in sub-Saharan Africa and, in particular: the inter-relationships between rural development and HIV/AIDS; and the broad policy and programming challenges that the epidemic poses for rural institutions.…

The core thesis is that Western neoclassical economics and law (particularly Anglo-American) have a peculiar cultural history that biases Western-trained economists and lawyers against common property systems like those found among Africans and American Indians. This Western cultural bias is…

This study uses aerial photographs and survey data from sixty four parishes in east-central Uganda to identify the factors affecting conversion of woodlands and traditional grazing areas to agriculture. Regression analysis shows that customary land tenure institutions, greater population…