ABSTRACT
Africa’s ongoing land reforms and the contemporary large-scale land alienation that surged following the 2007 economic downturn have condemned the continent’s numerous indigenous communities to resource rights abuse. The newly established regimes seem to further relegate the indigenous models of land ownership, which ensured better protection and guarantee of the people’s rights by offering a more contextualized user-rights and conflict resolution mechanism among members and non-members of the respective communities. In implementing the new land and related regulations, some African governments are accused of sponsoring eviction, rape, and arbitrary detention of protesting villagers. Given the failure by domestic and international law to protect the resource rights of the indigenous people, as exemplified in the infamous cases of the Gambella region in Ethiopia and Nyamuma village in Tanzania, this chapter questions the legitimacy of Africa’s new land policies. This chapter argues for reverting to a more inclusive decentralized approach to resource ownership that would empower indigenous communities to control their resources with non-interfering guaranteed protection by the state. A further call is made for international law to recognize resource rights to better guarantee the most valued right to life as provided for in the various national and international legal instruments.
