Land Rights Governance In Present Day Africa And It'S Evolution

Most of the Land in Africa is owned under the customary land tenure system with the various traditional leaders as custodians of these huge chunks of land on which subjects have and hold land rights. As traditional leaders, it is our duty to see to it that the land rights of our subjects are fully attained in an equitable manner that would then spur on economic growth and development in the different parts of Africa whilst also ensuring environmental protection and sustainable and eco-friendly development. In this regard, we the traditional leaders in Africa stand together with our various heads of state in reaffirming the commitments made by the heads of state of the African Union in July 2009 to eradication of poverty and raise the living standards for all African people and in particular specific commitments under the declaration on land issues and challenges in Africa which calls for the use of Frameworks and guidelines on land policy in Africa. To this end specifically in Adjumani District of Uganda, we have embarked on a huge drive towards land rights registration for customary land rights owners to ensure that they receive a certificate of customary ownership thus offering protection and enabling business with these certificates of customary ownership as security in any future financial transactions with monetary institutions. This will also minimise the potential negative impacts of large scale land acquisitions, land dispossession and environmental degradation whilst enabling us to archive equitable and sustainable agricultural development and economic transformation that will ensure water security, food security and protection of our forests and ecosystems. However, during the course of making these much-needed changes, we have encountered many legislative huddles in the design of current legislation which is mostly colonial by design and does not favour the African dream and also a policy issues that would bring the traditional institutions at loggerheads with the local government structures. There is need to ensure that the activities of the traditional institutions are lawfully embedded in the national constitutions and that traditional leaders receive the ideological recalibration to lead for the African dream.