Panel 138: Negotiating access to land in East Africa

Land opportunities for the poor are shrinking in a context of strong demographic, economic, ecological and political constraints: high population densities and increase, subdivision of inherited family land holdings, reduced size of plots and strategies of accumulation on the part of politico-economic elites. In addition the productivity of land itself is threatened through the development of increasingly marginal land. The youth and rapid growth of the population, pressure on resources, increasing poverty and deepening inequalities all contribute to competition for land and potential conflicts. Our main focus is land and identity stakes within the scope of power relations in East Africa. We intend to study practices and representations, taking into account issues of sovereignty, demographic and environmental constraints, at two different scales of analysis: a/ at the family level, intergenerational land transmission; and b/ at the national scale, land administration, land and environmental policy; keeping in mind the global context of international policy formulation, globalisation and the growing demand by foreign investors for land suitable for large-scale agricultural projects. This panel will deal with negotiated access to resources in relation to various and somewhat conflicting patrimonial strategies and conceptualisations within given policy frameworks, i.e. what different categories of actors view as belonging to them, hence as defining them and the specific role of the State in shaping control over resources.