Originally published April 1, 2026 by the Land Portal Foundation. Republished from the original article under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Original embedded images have been omitted.
Related project: The Land Facility.
Presentations from across Sub-Saharan Africa demonstrate how ongoing analysis and engagement with political and economic factors is necessary to realise sustained land governance reforms.
The 5th International Land Management Conference (ILM5), held in London and online in March 2026, explored the wide range of socio-cultural, political and economic factors that influence land management and land markets. It was organised by the Land International Network for Knowledge (LINK) and co-hosted by the University of the West of England, the Land Facility Decision Support Unit (LF-DSU) and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).
This blog reflects on a session on power and agency in land governance, which included a series of presentations that suggest a recurring lesson: land governance activities, systems and programmes are shaped and reshaped by the political economy features surrounding them and empower or disempower those whose land they impact. The session combined academic research with insights from practitioners and perspectives from policymakers and public servants, highlighting examples of how these various approaches and viewpoints grapple with the political economy of land governance.
The session was moderated by the Land Facility Decision Support Unit’s (DSU) deputy team lead, Emily Hayter, and featured a lead presentation by Catherine Boone, Harold Laski Professor of Political Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and part of the DSU’s Political Economy Advisory Group.
Quick read
- Land governance reform is shaped as much by political and economic forces as by technical design
- Not understanding political economy can undermine the intent and objectives of reform.
- Gaps between national land reform designs and local realities can be as consequential as the policies themselves
- Effective reform means recognising where power and authority actually reside, not just where formal systems suggest they should
- Commercial interests can impact legal progress on community land rights
- Political economy analysis is not a one-off exercise – it should run throughout activities, systems, and programmes
Things seen and unforeseen: lessons from Côte d’Ivoire
Catherine started the session with a striking illustration of how attempts at land administration reform can encounter complications that are both “seen and unforeseen” at the start of the reform process. She centred her comments on the case of Côte d’Ivoire, where land certification policies have a 30-year history of trial and error. In this setting, what may seem to be a straightforward goal, the registering and titling of rural land, was actually an extremely complicated and politicised process. Controversies surrounding land administration reform stoked both land and political tensions and contributed to extensive civil conflict in the 2000s. She laid out the ‘big picture’ of what political economy looked like in this context of intensely politicised land governance – painting a nuanced picture of the different priorities and approaches of actors in the reform process, describing twists and turns over time.
The land registration programme that Côte d’Ivoire embarked on in the 1980s disrupted an array of vested interests, inflamed grievances, and shifted balances of power in the rural economy. Many smallholder farmers who had worked the land for decades were threatened with dispossession by a land registration policy that privileged customary landowners. In Catherine’s words, the case underscores: “…how explosive the land issues can be, and also how a whole country can be sucked into a conflagration in which the land politics are so central.” This is the kind of situation political economy analysis is meant to untangle.
Catherine Boone presenting at the ILM5. Photo by Euan Crawford/Independent photographer
What has evolved is a set of land registration policies and procedures that are rather different from the land governance system originally envisaged. Social scientists and others pushed for a gradual approach, formalising rental contracts between owners and farmers while deprioritising full land titling. While some have resisted this messy compromise, it has prevailed for the time being.
Catherine shared lessons learned from reforms that were iteratively shaped into better alignment with the changing dynamics of Côte d’Ivoire’s political economy. It will probably take many decades for land registration policies to reach full implementation. In the meantime, the government is under increasing pressure from domestic and foreign investors with stakes in moving rapidly toward the full commercialisation of rural land. As one of the leading economies in West Africa, the stakes in negotiating the complexities of land tenure and use in Côte d’Ivoire remain high.
Learning from Kenya’s frontier counties for sustainable and inclusive reform
The presentation of the Hon. Saleh Maalim Alio, Sub-National Minister for Lands, Housing, Urban Development and Municipality Affairs for the County Government of Mandera, on Kenya’s frontier counties added another dimension to how political economy considerations can shape programme design and affect agency. He detailed how already complex local political economy factors can be further complicated by national-level programme design and discussed what this means for harmonising customary systems with constitutional reforms.
Kenya’s frontier counties, which account for around 70% of the country’s land area, are shaped by political economy features that distinguish them from typical Kenyan contexts, including the legacy of colonial alienation and dispossession, ethnic and clan politics, and religious issues between Christians and Muslims. The country’s 2010 constitution formally recognised community land and aimed at emphasising equity, sustainability and inclusivity, but its implementation has been uneven, which is itself a potential political economy issue reflecting the limited influence of frontier counties in national policy.
“…frontier counties sit at the intersection of identity, resources and governance,” said Hon. Saleh Maalim Alio. “A hybrid model is needed to bridge customary and statutory systems. It is inclusive, it is conflict sensitive [and] can reform the land governance into a foundation of peace and development.”
These counties have emerged as resource frontiers in recent years, intensifying the existing socio-cultural, political and economic factors that influence land governance. Extractive projects such as mining have increased land values and intensified competition for control, but community consultation has been limited, and marginalisation has fuelled demand for benefit sharing. Kenya’s national-level land information management system has not been fully implemented at the county level, so county governments have developed their own systems for land registration, resulting in parallel systems that create uncertainty in both land politics and economy.
This complexity suggests that political economy needs to be central to programme design, particularly in a dual governance system operating at both national and community levels. Customary systems offer legitimacy and flexibility, and are adaptive to pastoral and nomadic communities, but risk elite capture and the exclusion of minorities, young people and women. The reality of dual governance through parallel systems creates legal uncertainties. These tensions need to be analysed, and the resulting programmes grounded in an understanding of how communities can benefit sustainably from the resources extracted from their land.
Working with religious leaders on women’s land rights in Ethiopia
Netsanet Genene and Rahel Hailu from Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) Ethiopia offered practical insights into how understanding political economy factors can positively shape the design of an intervention and empower traditionally marginalised groups. Their presentation demonstrated how strategic and creative engagement methods can shape and support the use of knowledge of the political economy context and the various stakeholders involved in a programme.
Ethiopia’s land certification programme has made substantial progress since the late 1990s, with approximately eight million households receiving land tenure security and most certificates issued in women’s names or jointly with their husbands. However, deep-rooted social and cultural norms continue to restrict women’s ability to access, use, inherit, and control land, and to limit their decision-making power over their land.
A pilot to engage religious leaders for their support shifting these norms across three target regions was designed in response to where authority and influence actually reside and would have an impact in the community— through clergy rather than government officials and project staff.
Read more about GIZ’s work with Landesa to explore women’s land rights from the perspective of Ethiopian Christianity.
The programme recognised that the clergy’s specialised knowledge of social, cultural, and religious norms and their capacity to bridge formal and customary land laws could serve as mediators and interpreters of gender justice. Church and community events, home visits, and Sunday school sessions were designed to reach and empower communities through channels they already knew and trusted, with approaches and guides cascaded to other members of the clergy to create new perspectives and achieve impact.
The results were meaningful: clergy have incorporated messages on justice, fairness, and women’s land rights into their teachings and community work; conflicts mediated through religious channels have decreased, and improved knowledge and awareness have led to women participating more in dialogues and feeling more empowered within their communities.
Session moderator and Land Facility Decision Support Unit (DSU) Deputy Team Lead, Emily Hayter, observes the presentations. Photo by Euan Crawford/Independent photographer.
Land reform and commercial influences
Closing the session, Liz Wiley, an independent political economist who specialises in land tenure, shared reflections on the broader global picture, with a focus on a wave of land reforms across Africa from the 1980s, and often a notable gap between legal progress and real community agency.
Significant progress on legal recognition of community lands has been made across the African continent, but the same commercial interests that make the communal lands of communities valuable – minerals, energy, high-end tourism – are also the forces that drive the reluctance of many states to recognise these as lawfully owned in common, limiting their reforms to the house and farm parcels of communities. This also affects compulsory acquisition valuations, as many countries have not updated their laws to properly value communal land such as forests, rangelands, and marshes.
Liz highlighted that compensation for acquisitions typically remains based on land’s present use and value—not its potential—meaning that wealth is essentially transferred from communities to investors. Until communities can retain ownership stakes in the development that occurs on their land— rather than being bought out at often below-market rates—land titling will function less as a tool of empowerment and more as a mechanism that legitimises dispossession.
Development and government programmes that seek to empower and enable communities to engage with land governance reforms must ensure that these commercial interests are factored into planning and implementation.
What these insights mean for land governance
Taken together, the insights from this session demonstrate the need for political economy analysis not only as a diagnostic tool at the outset of programme design, but also as a continuous element of implementation and adaptation. Understanding the gap between formal programme objectives and on-the-ground realities enables planning, mitigation, and programme adaptation in the face of shifts in power, agency, and other contextual factors. This is not to suggest that political economy analysis is a simple exercise—as Catherine Boone noted, it is costly, messy and ‘boutique,’ meaning it is highly tailored and context-specific—but proceeding without it carries a potentially much higher cost.