The land issue remains a colonial legacy which Africa must resolve to facilitate the region＇s Before colonialism land was considered by communities as economic rather than a socio-economic advancements political reso...The land issue remains a colonial legacy which Africa must resolve to facilitate the region＇s Before colonialism land was considered by communities as economic rather than a socio-economic advancements political resource. Agricultural communities vacated land no longer fertile or useful for pasture. Conflicts over parcels of land were therefore rare and if they did occur often resulted in migration. Scramble over parcels of land was thus for need. However, with European scramble and arbitrary partition of Africa in the nineteenth century, formal boundaries were established by colonialists between colonies, a policy later pursued by colonial administrators between communities within colonies. Colonial policies and decolonization process in some colonies complicated the land problem, resulting in the scramble over land for greed by the newly independent states and communities. Land scrambled for greed engendered generalized conflicts. This paper thus intends to argue that the scramble over land for greed made land more a factor of contention than peace in Africa. A chronological-illustrative method, with references from the different geographical divide in Africa was adopted to explore the changing land usage and faces of land conflicts in Africa with the finality that land question in the region is largely a colonial problem.展开更多
文摘The land issue remains a colonial legacy which Africa must resolve to facilitate the region＇s Before colonialism land was considered by communities as economic rather than a socio-economic advancements political resource. Agricultural communities vacated land no longer fertile or useful for pasture. Conflicts over parcels of land were therefore rare and if they did occur often resulted in migration. Scramble over parcels of land was thus for need. However, with European scramble and arbitrary partition of Africa in the nineteenth century, formal boundaries were established by colonialists between colonies, a policy later pursued by colonial administrators between communities within colonies. Colonial policies and decolonization process in some colonies complicated the land problem, resulting in the scramble over land for greed by the newly independent states and communities. Land scrambled for greed engendered generalized conflicts. This paper thus intends to argue that the scramble over land for greed made land more a factor of contention than peace in Africa. A chronological-illustrative method, with references from the different geographical divide in Africa was adopted to explore the changing land usage and faces of land conflicts in Africa with the finality that land question in the region is largely a colonial problem.
