Women's Movements, Customary Law, and Land Rights in Africa: The Case of Uganda

ABSTRACT Much of the literature on women and land tenure in Africa has viewed the introduction of land titling, registration, and the privatization of land under colonialism and after independence as a setback for women, leaving women in a state of even greater insecurity with poorer prospects for accessing land, and hence, obtaining a livelihood. The demise of the authority of clans and local elders has made women's land rights even more precarious. In this context women's movements in Africa have adopted a rights-based approach that challenges customary land and other practices. In doing so they have contradicted a new consensus among policymakers around the view that sees land tenure policy as building on customary systems and giving them legal recognition This paper attempts to account for this apparent contradiction in the case of Uganda, which has gone further than most African countries in devolving land administration to the local level, while at the same time giving rise to one of the most active women's movements challenging customary land tenure practices. If women were benefiting from customary land tenure arrangements, as the development practitioners argue, one would think the preservation of customary rights or modifications in the customary systems would have been desirable goals of the movement. This paper explores this apparent divergence of approaches to women's land rights. INTRODUCTION Much of the literature on women and land tenure in Africa has viewed the introduction of land titling, registration, and the privatization of land under colonialism and after independence as a setback for women, leaving women in a state of even greater insecurity with poorer prospects for accessing land and hence obtaining a livelihood. Customary land tenure systems were eroded and transformed in ways that were disadvantageous to women. Today, the prevailing policy and much of the scholarly wisdom, from perspectives as ideologically diverse as the World Bank, Oxfam, and many feminist development studies scholars, seems to have converged around the view that sees land tenure policy as building on customary systems. The convergence does not, however, rest on identical premises. The World Bank, for example, sees the reliance on customary arrangements as a simpler and less conflictual route to the eventual titling, registration, and privatization of land ownership, whereas Oxfam sees the reliance on customary systems as a way to strengthen and democratize local communities, and promote bottom-up grassroots initiatives. (1) Thus, one of the most dramatic changes in land tenure reform today is that, for the first time since the pre-colonial period, states are giving legal recognition to existing African tenure regimes, which are being treated on par with the freehold/leasehold systems. (2) Unregistered customary tenure, which is the main system of land rights in Africa, is being recognized in the new policies. Ironically, at the very time that these gains are being won in the name of the rural poor, the pastoralists, women, and the landless, African women have mounted new movements to eradicate customary land tenure practices and fight for the rights of women to be able to inherit, purchase, and own land in their own name. Feminist lawyers working with these movements have argued that customary law in the present day context has been used to selectively preserve practices that subordinate women. Rather than seeing customary land practices as a basis on which to improve women's access to land, they are advocating for rights-based systems that improve women's ability to buy, own, sell, and obtain titles on land. This paper attempts to account for this apparent contradiction in the case of Uganda, which has gone further than most African countries to devolve land administration to the local level, while at the same time giving rise to one of the most active women's movements challenging customary land tenure practices. …