Second, traditional tenure regimes often restricted women’s inheritance rights (Casari & Lisciandra 2016).<sup>2</sup> In addition to contradicting basic tenets of equality, such discrimination undermines productivity of land use as documented by studies showing that insecure inheritance rights reduced women’s input use (Dillon & Voena 2018) and investment in soil fertility (Deininger _et al._ 2021) even during spouses’ lifetime. Unclear inheritance arrangements increased women’s fear of land loss (Deininger _et al._ 2019b) and their likelihood of being involved in land disputes (Deininger & Castagnini 2006). In Ghana, stronger female inheritance rights encouraged women to invest on their plots and men, whose outside options were better, to take up non-agricultural employment, supporting structural transformation (Barker 2022).

Data from the Afrobarometer survey point to strong public support for gender equality with more than 70% of respondents in favor of equal land rights for women. Yet, women’s land rights in case of divorce or inheritance often remain fragile as in Tanzania where progressive views regarding women’s rights by members of local judicial bodies were not reflected in actual judgements (Genicot & Hernandez-de-Benito 2022). While changes in family law can be a first step towards shifting customary gender norms (Aldashev _et al._ 2012), training of officials, awareness raising, and access to mediation in specific cases is often needed (Cecchi & Melesse 2016).

Finally, co-optation of chiefs by colonial institutions to collect taxes <mark>(Frankema & van Waijenburg 2013) or help transfer l</mark> and to outsiders via concessions (Lowes & Montero 2020) <mark>has i</mark> n many settings <mark>undermined mechanisms that traditionally underpinned trust in and accountability by such leaders (</mark> Acemoglu et al. 2014).<sup>3</sup> Chiefs whose downward accountability has been compromised may ‘privatize’ land for personal benefit even if this reduces social welfare (Leeson & Harris 2018), widens inequality (Obeng-Odoom 2014), or undermines sustainability (Mihaylova 2023). They may act as land brokers for outsiders (Lentz 2010); behaving like owners rather than custodians of land (Lanz et al. 2018) or let themselves be co-opted by politicians (Chimhowu 2019) to offer political support for personal benefit rather than that of the group they represent (de Kadt & Larreguy 2018).

# **2.2 Land registries and the benefits of documented land rights**

Land registries comprise a spatial and a textual component. The former, normally referred to as cadaster, describes boundaries of the objects (land parcels) over which rights are defined, reducing the incidence of land disputes over long time horizons (Libecap & Lueck 2011) and making land use change (Dippel _et al._ 2020) or assembly (Leonard & Parker 2021) easier. The textual part, referred to as the register, provides

> 2 A documented exception is Siam's traditional usufruct land rights system in the 19th century where women’s land rights were very secure, protected in court against challenges by investors or local elites, and supported high living standards (Chankrajang & Vechbanyongratana 2021).

> 3 <mark>Systematic differences in the use of indirect rule between British and French colonial powers are still visible in higher levels of chiefs’ perceived corruption and lower s</mark> tate capacity in former British vs. French territories (Ali _et al._ 2020c). This also holds for historical tribal homelands that were split between British and French colonies, and for counties colonized by either of the two powers within Cameroon (Ali _et al._ 2019c).

8