Land conflict dynamics in Africa: a critical review on farmer-pastoralist conflict perspectives
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Date
2022
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Academic Journals
Abstract
This paper examines the theoretical bases underlying the causes of land conflicts. It involves a critical
analysis of various contentions surrounding land nexus violent conflicts with particular attention to
farmer-pastoralist conflicts. The drive for this examination is more on a comparison of causes between
such conflicts in varying contexts of African. The major aim is to broaden the understanding about the
nature of these conflicts with the prospect of setting grounds for scholars and policy makers for
reviewing and crafting relevant intervening measures. The paper draws on debates and literature on
farmer-pastoralist conflict to develop insights into their dynamics. This aims at making stakeholders
informed of the existing gaps in research and underlying causes that could be capitalized on in
devising relevant mitigating measures. The review shows that the uncontrolled interaction of the
supply; demand and structural induced aspects contribute to the state of inequality, competition, and
conflicts among land users. This situation is found to be aggravated by the
social and political
conditions surrounding the causes and governance of natural resources, with typical scenario of the
changing policies of land tenure that have exacerbated increasing land grabbing and tenure
insecurities. The paper recommends the need for revisiting the formal and informal structures that
governs resource distribution in a bid to alleviate existing land- access inequalities and conflicts.
Description
International Journal of Peace and Development Studies Vol.13(1), pp. 17-28
Keywords
Conflicts, Farmers, Pastoralists, Resource conflicts, Competition, Environmental scarcity, Structural scarcity, Resource degradation