The papers included in this volume were earlier presented at a conference on the settlement of land claims in Africa, which was held in Amsterdam in September 2003. The papers are written primarily from an anthropological perspective.

Compte-rendu d'un séminaire sur les recherches pour le développement d'une agriculture durable au Bénin qui s'est tenu le 9 septembre 1993 à Amsterdam.

Pendant l'année 1982 et une partie de l'année 1983 l'auteur a effectué une recherche au Sénégal avec la collaboration de M. Sypkens Smit, anthropologue. Le thème central de la recherche était l'interaction entre les différents systèmes de droit foncier. Le présent rapport relate la phase préparatoire de la recherche, ainsi que les activités des deux chercheurs sur le terrain, en Basse Casamance. Le chapitre sur "Les aspects anthropologiques du droit foncier: le cas d'un village diola" est de la main de M. Sypkens Smit.

Facing problems of land, natural resources and environment, Sahelian governments have become increasingly aware that solutions must be sought first among local communities. These communities, in association with government at local and national levels, should be responsible for land and natural resource management. This chapter discusses recent land tenure and environmental management developments as they have occurred in Mali.

This book offers a historical analysis of the embattled structures of rural local governance in South Africa, with specific reference to the role of traditional authorities in Xhalanga in the Eastern Cape. More specifically, the book illustrates how at least in the Xhalanga district chieftainship was contested from the establishment of the district in 1865 to the advent of democracy in South Africa.

Cette étude aborde la question de l'acquisition de droits sur la terre, tels que ceux-ci ont été mis au grand jour au cours du développement et du réglement d'un litige portant sur l'utilisation d'une parcelle située dans la ville de N'zara, chef-lieu de la circonscription de Mango, dans le nord du Togo.

Text in Italian. English sum.: This study examines a number of cases in which the people of Ziguinchor, in the Casamance region of Senegal, have been in dispute with the public authorities over the question of access to land in urban areas. These conflicts, however, should not obscure the fact that the citizens of Ziguinchor and the representatives of the Senegalese State generally manage to reach a consensus on questions of urban land use.

Many local tenure arrangements in Niger were largely implicit, not recorded in any codified form. In the process of codification now underway, chiefs are regarded as the key interpreters of tradition, mutating the implicit into the explicit. Land tenure reform is not without contradictions. How are chiefs to maintain a level of flexibility and dynamism within the codified, rigidified form that the local tenure arrangements will have once they are made explicit?