Roman water law in rural Africa: the unfinished business of colonial dispossession

Barbara van Koppen, Pieter van der Zaag, Emmanuel Manzungu and Barbara Tapela

Water International, 2014, vol. 39, issue 1, 49-62

Abstract: This paper discusses four questions about the recent water law reforms in Sub-Saharan Africa, which strengthen permit systems. First, do permit systems continue to dispossess rural small-scale users, as intended by European colonizers who introduced principles of Roman law? Second, is it wrong to assume that one can convert one legal system (customary water rights) into another legal system (permits) in the short term? Third, do current permit systems discriminate against small-scale users? And lastly, do fiscal measures ingrained in permits foster rent seeking and strengthen water resources as a commodity for nationals and foreigners who can pay? As all the answers are positive, the paper concludes by recommending measures to recognize and protect small-scale water users and render state regulation more realistic.

Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02508060.2013.863636 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rwinxx:v:39:y:2014:i:1:p:49-62

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rwin20

DOI: 10.1080/02508060.2013.863636

Access Statistics for this article

Water International is currently edited by James Nickum, Philippus Wester, Remy Kinna, Xueliang Cai, Yoram Eckstein, Naho Mirumachi and Cecilia Tortajada

More articles in Water International from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().