View source for Customary Land Tenure in Africa



=Discussion=

==Individual, Collective and Intergenerational Rights==

The clan is the primary social institutions in the Cameroon-Gabon forest continuum. Based on
exogamy and virilocality (which, combined, require women to marry outside of the clan and in
their husband’s residence), it is segmented into patrikin groups of progressive inclusiveness.
These groups, the lineages, are the essential units through which territorial and tenure rights
transit. 


These are founded upon genealogy and the valorization of human labor and are first
made of three hierarchically interlinked series of rights, which have a ‘constitutional’ value in
the traditional system:


===Genealogical rights===

These are constituted by the establishment of a territorial right of
first occupation, symbolized by the ax right to virgin land and the establishment of a lineage
(mvog). These rights are transmitted through the genealogical line to the male descendants of the
founder. The rights of these first generations are not really lost with their death. The land
remains the ultimate property, in individis, of generations dead, living and unborn; hence, the
principle of “non exo-alienability” of land in African customary tenure systems (Verdier, 1971).


===Productive rights===

All individual rights to natural resources have a basis in usufruct. The
first productive right is the right to live by one's own labor. All members of the community,
including strangers to whom asylum has been accorded, are ‘constitutionally’ entitled to this
right. The fundamental appropriation principle in this series of rights is the incorporation of
labor into the resource. The enduring physical evidence of labor done on determines the duration
and security of individual tenure. This is the second type of ax right, as an individual right of
development.


===Succession rights===

These are determined by the principle of patrilineal descent, and
guarantee the access of men to inheritance through their nuclear lineage. Because of virilocal
exogamy, women are generally excluded from these successoral rights, although this principle
may be changing (Diaw, 1997a). These three series of rights together guarantee the equilibrium
between the universal right “to create” and to live by one's labor, and the imperative of
conserving within the group the resource base necessary for its reproduction from one generation
to the next.


==“Nested Rights”, Land Conversion, and Productive Cycles==

Chimere Diaw:


"These three series of rights are expressed in space through four distinct access and property
regimes:


===Collective ownership===

This property regime applies to all areas under human influence,
be they forests, rivers, swamps or farm
land. It is the result of the genealogical
rights held by the corporate lineage, that
is, the operational unit that deals with
land allocation, access, succession,
litigation and other aspect of the tenure
system. Several such lineages, endowed
with their own exclusive land base, may
coexist within the same community and
share common pool resources (e.g.,
primary forest and fisheries) and
common governance institutions (e.g.,
village councils).


===Individual control===

This is the domain of productive rights when they are associated with
an investment in the resource. Crop fields, tree-plantations, fallow lands, swamp farms and
women’s fishing barrages (fis) are all under this access regime. The lineage remains the
collective owner of the resource base, but individuals within the framework of their household
and nuclear lineage exercise actual exclusive control. In cases of perenial investment in the
resource (cocoa or oil palm plantations, fishponds, etc.), this regime may have all the features of
permanent ownership, except for the possibility of exo-alienability of the land base.
Common pool access. This definition is more exact than that of ‘common property’,
since it refers, as with the previous one, to an access regime based upon collective property.
Access is free to all members of a territorially based group (the corporate lineage or the
community, as a cluster of lineages) and restricted to outsiders. This access regime is the pivotal
element in the dynamics of resource use and tenure conversion. All collectively owned
resources are subjected to it, at some stage in their lifetime. There are only two fundamental
ways of transforming the initial collective or open status of resources into an individually owned
product: enclosure or extraction (figure 2). One unit of resource enclosed or subtracted by one
individual from the common pool is not available to the next. Agricultural fields, tree farms or
fishponds are typically subtracted through enclosure, whilst the appropriation of fish, wildlife
and forest wild fruits can be accomplished only through the so-called ‘rule of capture’.


===Free access===


Areas exempt from exclusive control are quite rare in the forest zone. They
consist mainly of arid zones, tracks and some rivers. Some
forest products, such as esok, Garcinia lucida, are also subject
to open access.


==Conclusion==

Chimere Diaw:

All these regimes interlink to form a prism of nested rights
applying to nested eco-niches across the landscape, and
overtime. This is because the land base and above ground
vegetal and animal resources may be subjected to different
tenure statuses and transformation conditions26. Several layers
of rights are thus intertwined into different segments of the
landscape. Agriculture in the area has also been historically
built on long term productive cycles that imply several
mutations and transmutations of the natural and social statuses
of land (figures 3 & 4). This cycling is neither linear nor
unique, and lead to numerous variants. It has, so far, permitted in most areas the reconstitution
of secondary and mature primary forests, after a period of agricultural use."
(https://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/bitstream/handle/10535/312/diaw.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y)

[[Category:Africa]]

[[Category:Cameroon]]

[[Category:Gabon]]

[[Category:Commons]]

[[Category:Peerproperty]]