Land and Corruption in Africa

The growing pressures on land and land markets have had a notorious effect on the African continent, where the displacement figures are staggering: fluctuating between 11 and 13 million people. Infamous land disputes have emerged in the process as a consequence of poor governance, corruption and climatic changes that pit herders against each other and in deadly conflict with settled communities. Land grabbing—both by external and multinational capital as well as intra-African investors—for rain-fed agriculture and other development schemes have led to the dispossession and pauperization of many thousands of small producers from Liberia to Lamu, Libya to Lesotho. Conflicts arising from other origins have resulted in displacement of many other land-dependent people. A factor in this dynamic is poorly developed land administration and governance, which adds to the propensity of disputes and makes solutions all the more elusive. 

In 2006, the African Union Commission (AUC), the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the African Development Bank (AfDB) initiated a joint process to develop a framework and practical guidelines for land policy and land reform in Africa. In light of the many challenges, the initiative sought to strengthen land rights, enhance productivity and secure livelihoods for the majority of the continent’s population. That initiative was carried out by way of extensive consultations involving all five of Africa’s Regional Economic Communities, civil society organizations (CSOs), centers of excellence in Africa and elsewhere, practitioners and researchers in land policy development and implementation, government agencies and Africa’s development partners. The final outcome was a draft Framework to Strengthen Land Rights, Enhance Productivity and Secure Livelihoods that went before the formal decision-making processes of the AU for approval and adoption by the Assembly of Heads of State and Government in July 2009.

That final Framework and Guidelines document took the form of seven interrelated chapters, including theoretical and analytical sections followed by a normative presentation of key operational processes that African States will have to follow in order to develop comprehensive policies that would enable the land sector to fully perform its developmental role.

At the same time as the African initiative, the Legal Empowerment of the Poor project emerged with the support of Norway and implemented under UNDP. The Legal Empowerment initiative has focused on Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, with a focus on both rural and urban land. Its aim is to formalize land tenure in such a way as to allow impoverished people to access credit and to realize the full exchange value of lands and properties that poor people hold.

One assertion of the Legal Empowerment initiative is that determining ultimate land ownership administratively and through customary tenure, rather than through the formal market, spawns rent seeking, nepotism and corrupt behavior. The Legal Empowerment project seeks to engage donors and development agents to integrate land issues into Poverty Reduction Strategies while establishing transparent and predictable administrative practice and good governance.

Parallel to these efforts is an investigation by Transparency International into the risks and manifestations of corruption in the land sector. Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon and Morocco were among the 69 countries surveyed in 2009, and the MENA countries showed the highest percentage (40%) of respondents who reported paying a bribe in the last 12 months. By charting this form of corruption by government service, the land sector ranked third most corrupt in the composite of 69 countries polled.

The occasions of administrative and political corruption range from bribe taking from citizens registering their land to fraudulent land grabbing by military and political elites. In Kenya, a study recently found that the average bribe that citizens pay to government land agents is $65. However, an estimate from India indicates that the annual total of such bribes amounts to $700 million in unaccountable transactions to subsidize public servants to perform their jobs.

While these costs may represent only the tip of a proverbial iceberg of losses and damages in time and other resources for citizens, as well as ultimately in the erosion of government legitimacy and foregone development opportunities.