By Hubert Ouedraogo

In the last decade land reform in pastoral areas has gathered pace across Africa. From the Code Rurale in West African states to village land use planning in Tanzania, policy and legislation has taken positive steps towards providing greater protection to rangeland users and a formalisation of customary rights to land and resources. Despite this however, implementation and positive impact on the ground has been hampered by a lack of accountability, transparency, enforcement and unequal power relations between different stakeholders. Pastoralists and other rangeland users face ongoing if not, increasing, insecurities as land is removed for commercial and subsistence agriculture; conservation, tourism and wildlife hunting; and dams and other infrastructure. Where there is space for the growth of social movements and civil action, there have been some instances of success in preventing such appropriation.

As such this paper highlights that though policy and legislation is improving, the political economy of land reform also needs to be taken into account and addressed: good governance; the development of appropriate institutions with ‘balanced’ and effective power; and ‘space’ for civil society growth and action, are as vital to securing land and resource rights as a proclamation declaring village rights to a piece of grazing land. This paper will discuss these issues in the context of recent land reforms in West and East/Horn of Africa. It is produced with input from members and partners of the International Land Coalition – a membership organisation lobbying for fairer pro-poor policy and implementation of land reform across the globe.