Community land and natural resources lie at the heart of social, political and economic life in much of rural Africa. While the Zambian government acknowledges customary tenure, it has not established required legislation needed to secure it and support to communities in their efforts to protect their lands.
In Zambia, security of tenure for communities residing under customary land tenure settings has in recent years increasingly come under threat owing to the pressures of high rate of urbanization, speculation, subdivision and conversion to state land, which effectively excludes marginal populations from accessing resources for their land. While customary land is a major resource for most Zambians, the inadequacy or total lack of documentation leads to tenure insecurity, making people susceptible to forced displacements, and frequent land disputes.
This chapter investigated threats of statutory tenure on customary land. The study was primarily qualitative in nature and adopted a case study approach. Using evidence from Chamuka Chiefdom in Chisamba District, Central Province, the paper concludes that there are various threats of statutory tenure on customary land. These include traditional leaders losing control over land, displacements, land disputes, investors acquire more land than what is demarcated to them by traditional leaders, traditional leaders’ not consulting their community members, corruption, and tenure insecurity.
Through our robust search engine, you can search for any item of the over 64,800 highly curated resources in the Land Library.
If you would like to find an overview of what is possible, feel free to peruse the Search Guide.
