Africana Periodical Literature 
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| Title: | Individualisation and the Assault on Customary Tenure in Africa: Title Registration Programmes and the Case of Somalia |
| Author: | Besteman, Catherine |
| Year: | 1994 |
| Periodical: | Africa: Journal of the International African Institute |
| Volume: | 64 |
| Issue: | 4 |
| Pages: | 484-515 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Somalia |
| Subjects: | customary law land law land reform Law, Human Rights and Violence Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/1161370 |
| Abstract: | Over the past forty years, programmes intended to individualize rights to land have been introduced across Africa. These programmes are supported by an ideology which argues that individualization is a necessary prerequisite of agricultural investment and development. Utilizing data on the effects of the national title registration programme introduced in Somalia in 1975, and drawing on similar studies of registration programmes in other African countries, this article challenges the assumption that individualization and registration necessarily result in improved agricultural investment and productivity. On the contrary, the data reviewed here suggest that such programmes have contributed to concentration of ownership, growing landlessness, insecurity of tenure, wealth inequalities, and even declining productivity in many areas. The motivation behind individualization and registration programmes is analysed, including an examination of the colonial and Western ideological distinction between African 'communal' land tenure and modern Western individualized tenure, struggles for power over control of resources, and a tendency to treat land tenure as solely an economic (rather than social) institution. The Somali case study focuses on the middle Jubba river valley, where ethnographic fieldwork was carried out during twelve months in 1987-1988. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. |
