ABSTRACT
In the 1990s, countries across Africa embarked on major land reform programmes to facilitate land markets, promote individualization of land tenure and fast-track land titling, and to increase foreign investment in land – all in the name of alleviating poverty and promoting economic development. This chapter examines the special courts known as ‘land tribunals’ that were established by the Land Disputes Courts Act No. 2. It describes their functions, key characteristics, and operating procedures. The chapter devotes to three land disputes that were heard at different levels of the new system: one observed at the Ward Tribunal level, one at the District Tribunal level, and one at the High Court level. It first describes the decade-old new system, which has received scant scholarly attention, and then provide an ethnographic analysis of how these tribunals operate, how disputes come to be heard in these settings, how officials perform their responsibilities, how disputants respond to the proceedings.
