Smallholders’ Land Access in Sub-Saharan Africa : A New Landscape?

While scholars long recognized the importance of land markets as a key driver of rural non-farm development and transformation in rural areas, evidence on the extent of their operation and the nature of participants remains limited. We use household data from 6 countries to show that there is great...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Deininger, Klaus, Savastano, Sara, Xia, Fang
Format: Journal Article
Language:en_US
Published: Elsevier 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10986/25368
Description
Summary:While scholars long recognized the importance of land markets as a key driver of rural non-farm development and transformation in rural areas, evidence on the extent of their operation and the nature of participants remains limited. We use household data from 6 countries to show that there is great potential for such markets to increase productivity and equalize factor ratios. While rental markets transfer land to land-poor and labor-rich producers, their operation and thus impact may be constrained by policy restrictions. Their functioning may also be constrained by ill-defined or insecure rights that may arise from failure to fully compensate existing rights in cases of expropriation, a failure to implement more broadly land policies or to do so in a gender sensitive manner. Methodological and substantive conclusions are derived.