What is the nature today of the main land conflicts on the African continent?
Essentially, they are problems concerning access, regularization, use, and management of land, which are the basic components of what we call the “land equation” in mathematical terms. From my perspective, we can say that the root of the entire land issue in Africa is the scant (or limited) recognition of the historical rights of rural communities over their lands. Throughout the continent, communities existed before the invention of the modern state. For some time, these communities have been reclaiming these rights, through titles of possession or ownership which the modern states had never before recognized. The model imposed by the colonial powers was always based on the theory that whoever had the political power also had power over the land, and they never recognized any local rights. After independence, the model was maintained, and ownership of all the land was held by the states, through the governments (and here there is some institutional confusion between State and Governme
