Kilalopress — While nearly 70% of African lands remain governed by customary law unrecognized by formal legislation, civil society organizations are intensifying their fight for land justice and community sovereignty. This was highlighted during a presentation by Ms. Eileen Wakesho, Director of the Land, Environment, and Climate Program in Nairobi, at a journalist sensitization webinar held on November 6, 2025, ahead of the Conference on Land Policy in Africa (CLPA 2025) to be held in Addis Ababa later this month.
Titled “Africa Land Governance and Colonialism: Unpacking the Past, Confronting the Present, Advocating for the Future,” her intervention shed light on one of the continent’s most profound realities: the persistence of land inequalities inherited from colonialism and their influence on today’s injustices.
Land in Africa is not merely a development issue — it lies at the heart of a historical struggle for dignity, justice, and sovereignty. During the colonial period, European powers seized African lands under the doctrine of terra nullius, which held that territories not “developed” according to Western norms could be declared ownerless. Through this legal fiction, colonizers claimed ownership or trusteeship over vast regions, reducing local customary rights to mere tolerated uses.
From this emerged the dual land system that still structures most African countries today: on one side, a formal legal framework inspired by Western law, and on the other, a marginalized customary system. This historical fracture transformed land — once seen as a communal asset — into a market commodity. The resulting mass dispossession paved the way for centuries of injustice whose consequences persist to this day.
Nearly 70% of land in sub-Saharan Africa remains governed by customary law, often without legal recognition. This lack of protection exposes rural communities to chronic insecurity and makes them vulnerable to investors, multinational corporations, and sometimes local elites. Women, youth, and pastoralists are among the most affected by this precariousness.
Ms. Wakesho denounced what she called a “new form of land colonization” through large-scale land acquisitions, often presented as development projects but, in her view, representing a continuation of colonial dispossession. By exploiting the legal ambiguity between customary and statutory systems, powerful economic actors grab millions of hectares, leading to forced displacements, loss of livelihoods, and violent conflicts. “Behind every signed deal lies a fundamental question: Who truly owns Africa’s land?” she asked.
In response to these abuses, civil society has become a force of resistance. Across the continent, local organizations are waging an intense battle for land justice through political advocacy, legal assistance, and community mobilization. They raise public awareness of land rights, help villages secure collective titles, and train citizens to defend their land before the authorities.
Innovations are also emerging. Participatory mapping, developed in collaboration with local communities, helps demarcate and document customary territories. Supported by digital tools, these maps serve as powerful legal evidence to contest illegal land grabs. In Kenya, for instance, the Ogiek community won official recognition of their ancestral lands after years of struggle, thanks to persistent advocacy from civil society and international bodies.
Yet, as Ms. Wakesho emphasized, this battle is not fought only in courts or government offices — it is also fought in the media. Journalists play a crucial role by investigating the roots of land conflicts, amplifying the voices of marginalized communities, and demanding transparency in land transactions. Land reporting, she stressed, is not merely local storytelling but a political act that exposes deep-seated structures of historical injustice.
The decolonization of land governance is therefore not an act of remembrance — it is a present-day necessity and a prerequisite for future stability. As long as customary rights remain legally invisible, development, peace, and justice in Africa will remain fragile. For Ms. Eileen Wakesho, only a strong and lasting alliance between civil society and the media can pave the way for systemic change — one where land truly becomes the people’s heritage again, not a commodity for speculation.
“The land belongs to the people,” she concluded. “To reclaim it is to reclaim our future.”
By Kilalopress
