Reports
Discussion Papers
No.104 Customary Land Tenure, Inheritance Rules, and Smallholder Farmers in Malawi
by TAKANE Tsutomu
May 2007
ABSTRACT
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.
Keywords:
Land,
Smallholder,
Customary
Tenure,
Malawi,
Africa
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