Customary land tenure, inheritance rules, and smallholder farmers in Malawi

Based on information derived from six villages in various parts of rural Malawi, this paper examines the interrelationship between smallholder strategies to obtain land on the one hand, and customary land tenure and inheritance rules on the other. The paper revealed that although the majority of land transactions followed customary land tenure systems and inheritance rules, in a good number of cases land transactions deviated from the basic rules. One factor behind such deviation was the unique personal relationships that were developed between original landholders and heirs. Another factor was the seemingly increasing cases of returning wives in patrilineal villages. Still another factor was the intensifying land scarcity that encouraged villagers to adopt strategies to obtain land from any source by any means. On the other hand, there were also some cases in which the same land-scarcity problem induced villagers to countercheck the practice of flexible land transfer to prevent their lineage land from being alienated to non-kin members. These facts suggest that, in a land scarce situation, an individual strategy to obtain land rights from any possible sources by deviating from customary rules may occasionally be in conflict with a lineage strategy to countercheck such tendency.

Marriage as women's old age insurance : evidence from migration and land inheritance practices in rural Tanzania

In a traditional system of exogamous and patrilocal marriage prevalent in much of Sub-Saharan Africa, when she marries, a rural woman typically leaves her kin to reside with her husband living outside her natal village. Since a village that allows a widow to inherit her late husband's land can provide her with old age security, single females living outside the village are more likely to marry into the village. Using a natural experimental setting, provided by the longitudinal household panel data drawn from rural Tanzania for the period from 1991 to 2004, during which several villages that initially banned a widow's land inheritance removed this discrimination, this study provides evidence in support of this view, whereby altering a customary land inheritance rules in a village in favor of widows increased the probability of males marrying in that village. This finding suggests that providing rural women with old age protection (e.g., insurance, livelihood protection) has remarkable spatial and temporal welfare effects by influencing their decision to marry.

Better than nothing? : dowry in the absence of the legal protection of women's inheritance rights

The practice of dowry is often thought to be the root cause of the unequal treatment of women in India. For women without inheritance rights, however, dowry may function as their only source of protection. Using a nationwide dataset and exploiting a natural experimental situation, this study explores the effects of dowry on women's empowerment in India, a society where women do not have inheritance rights. In such a society, dowry seems to enhance women's status in the marital household. The effects reverse when women have equal inheritance rights as their brothers. Empirical analysis suggests that the outright ban on dowry that ignores the context may not necessarily benefit women.

Diversities and Disparities among Female-Headed Households in Rural Malawi

Using data obtained from a survey carried out in six villages in various parts of rural Malawi, this paper examines some of the main characteristics of female-headed households. In the study villages, most female-headed households are in a disadvantageous position relative to their male counterparts in terms of labour endowment, farm size, and agricultural productivity. The high cost of inputs, especially of fertilizer, prevents resource-poor female-headed households from improving maize self-sufficiency through increased productivity and from engaging in high-return agriculture such as tobacco production. The paper also shows that there are marked disparities within the category of female-headed households. Factors that enable some female-headed households to achieve high income include the availability of high-return nonfarm income opportunities, use of social networks to obtain labour and income opportunities, land acquisition through flexible applications of inheritance rules, and the existence of informal tobacco marketing. Livelihood diversification is adopted by both male- and female-headed households, but many of the female-headed households engage in low-return and low-entry-barrier activities such as agricultural wage labour. On the other hand, the high off-farm income in the wealthier female-headed households enables them to purchase fertilizer for own-farm production, contributing to an improvement in productivity and resultant increases in their total income.

Features of Land Conflicts in Post Civil War Rwanda

Land conflicts in Rwanda have attracted particular attention because they have both environmental and political causes. This paper attempts to shed light on the nature of land conflicts in present-day Rwanda based on popular justice records and interviews collected in two rural areas. From the analyses of these data, two types of land confl ict can be distinguished. The first type consists of those among family members. Given that land is the most important asset for ordinary rural households, its inheritance often brings about conflicts between right-holders. Those of the second type are triggered by political change. Impacts of the two national-level violent conflicts in Rwanda, the “social revolution” just before independence and the civil war in the 1990s, are of tremendous significance in this context. The military victory of the former rebels in 1994 caused a massive return of Tutsi refugees, who were officially permitted to acquire land from the original inhabitants. Although no serious protestation against this policy has occurred thus far, it has produced various land conflicts. Dealing with potential grievances among original inhabitants is an important challenge for the present government.