When ‘best practice’ means formalising: foreign large-scale land investments on customary tenure in Uganda and Sierra Leone

Against the background of the global ‘land rush’ debate, the international community has promoted a plethora of global governance norms for more responsible land investments. A growing emphasis has been set on the formalisation of land rights to protect local communities from dispossession. By now, there is an expectation on companies to identify and protect legitimate land rights and practice principles such as Free Prior Informed Consent. However, how companies do this is under-researched and varies widely. More importantly, whether the recognition and documentation of local land rights in the context of large-scale investments leads to the protection of these rights remains unclear. This paper analyses cases of land investments on customary land in northern Uganda and Sierra Leone, in which investors have facilitated processes of land formalisation. Based on 13 months of fieldwork, this paper argues that the extent to which global norms become effective in these cases is conditioned by the domestic context of land politics, the degree of recognition of customary tenure in practice, as well as the different approaches of investors in interpreting the land tenure security norm.