Interwoven Landscapes: Gender and Land in the Kafue Flats, Zambia

Sonja Merten () and Tobias Haller
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Sonja Merten: Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, 4123 Allschwil, Switzerland
Tobias Haller: Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Bern, 3012 Bern, Switzerland

Land, 2023, vol. 12, issue 9, 1-19

Abstract: This paper examines changes in formal and informal land access rules for women in the Kafue Flats of southern Zambia and identifies alternatives to land privatization. In rural African communities dependent on subsistence production, access to common pool resources (CPRs) such as fisheries, wildlife or wild fruits made an important contribution to household food and nutritional security. In the pre-colonial period, the use of agricultural land and associated CPRs was governed by local institutions of common property, characterized by more-than-human relationships embedded in the local animistic ontology. To examine how women’s pre-colonial access rights were increasingly disregarded in the wake of new statutory laws, we analyzed qualitative ethnographic data on livelihoods and food security from three time periods between 2002 and 2018. The findings show how customary law land tenure has remained important, despite being complemented by statutory law designed to also protect women’s property rights. We conclude that women’s customary access rights to land and CPRs must be taken into account in the drafting of formal legislation, as suggested by successful examples of bottom-up institution building in other regions.

Keywords: feminist political ecology; land use change; institutional change; Zambia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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