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Improving tenure security for the poor in Africa
Synthesis paper: Deliberations of the Legal Empowerment Workshop – Sub-Saharan Africa
Legal Empowerment of the Poor Working Paper #8
by Professor Patrick McAuslan
This paper aims to provide a synthesis and commentary with recommendations of the papers
given and the discussions which took place at the technical workshop on Improving Tenure
Security for the Rural Poor in Africa in October 2006. The workshop brought together a wide
range of persons from civil society – academics, representatives from NGOs – the FAO, the
principal sponsors of the workshop, and from some donors working on land issues from all over Sub-Saharan Africa with an emphasis on Anglophone Africa. The views expressed in this workshop are of significance. They are not the official positions of governments but they are representative of grass-roots involvement in land relations in Africa and are therefore entitled to respect.
The paper aims to bring out and emphasise the positive conclusions of the workshop and so
focuses on key matters rather than attempting to summarise all the discussions. Throughout the workshop, participants were conscious of the overall aim of trying to create systems of land administration and management that were pro-poor, that is, that had as their main thrust,
facilitating the poor’s access to land and ability to use their land to improve their economic and social well-being.
It is important to highlight at the outset of this paper a fundamental underlying belief or feeling which motivated the contributions of participants at the workshop: that the policies, laws and practices on land administration and management developed and implemented by central governments have been designed to benefit the “haves” – those in central government – at the expense of the “have nots” – the rural poor, and there needs to be a fundamental rethink of the whole basis of land administration to bring about a radical devolution of power to local communities before the rural poor are likely to be able to improve their condition.
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