Africa’s Triple Heritage, Land Commodification and Women’s Access to Land: Lessons from Cameroon, Kenya and Sierra Leone
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
9-2017
Keywords
Africa, access to land, Cameroon, commodification, indigenous culture, Kenya, land tenure, neoliberalism, Sierra Leone
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1177/0021909615612121
Abstract
Women have less access to land than men in Africa. Previous analyses have typically identified African indigenous culture as the problem’s exclusive source. With Cameroon, Kenya and Sierra Leone as empirical referents, an alternative explanation is advanced. Here, the problem is characterized as a product of Africa’s triple heritage, comprising three main cultures, viz., African indigenous tradition, European/Christianity and Arabia/Islam. The following is noted as a major impediment to women’s access to, and control of, land: the supplanting of previously collective land tenure systems based on family or clan membership by ‘ability-to-pay’ as the principal determinant of access to land.
Was this content written or created while at USF?
Yes
Citation / Publisher Attribution
Journal of Asian and African Studies, v. 52, issue 6, p. 760-779
Scholar Commons Citation
Njoh, Ambe J.; Ananga, Erick O.; Anchang, Julius Y.; Ayuk-Etang, Elizabeth MN; and Akiwumi, Fenda, "Africa’s Triple Heritage, Land Commodification and Women’s Access to Land: Lessons from Cameroon, Kenya and Sierra Leone" (2017). School of Geosciences Faculty and Staff Publications. 1990.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/geo_facpub/1990
