12. Land Reform in Africa: Towards Resource Utilization and Sustainability

The chapter captures the policy implications of land reform in Africa. It is pertinent to engage in conventional scholarship on the motivations and trajectories of land policies in the immediate post-colonial Africa. Some of the discourses have failed to capture the developmental realities of the modern socio-political and economic order. Many of the hitherto agrarian economies, like that of South Africa, that rely on land as the most important factor of production has become industrial; hence, diversification of African economies, in a way, and particularly, the rural-urban surge has diminished the importance of land to human survival. Many of the states concentrated on nationalization of land, land restitution and redistribution of land to correct the racially-skewed land arrangements, thereby jettisoning gender parity in respect of upholding women land rights. Although, the chapter recognizes the threat that unresolved land tenure system portrays; the need remains to devise an equitable land arrangement that promotes gender equality, land productivity, food security and both human and national sustainable development.