Challenges Facing Land Ownership in Rural Tanzania: What needs to be done?

Currently, Tanzania faces numerous challenges related to land ownership, especially in rural areas. The challenges include farmers-pastoralists conflicts, tenure disputes, and alienation of peasants. To address the challenges, the current policies and approaches used in the country need to be changed on the grounds that their inherent shortcomings make the policies unable to meet rampant land problems that the country has faced in recent years and continue to experience. In a study that assessed land ownership in Tanzania, it was found out that there is rampant land insecurity in the villages and lack of land information amongst the people. Based on the study findings, it is recommended that Tanzania should introduce authorization of land selling, and enact land ceiling acts for avoiding monopoly and excessive ownership by individuals. The country should also opt for land expropriation for the public good, land banking, women entitlement to land ownership, land education to the masses, and eased title procedure policies. These policies do not only favour the majority, especially the poor but also bring gender equity in land ownership.