Across East Africa, communal land rights are increasingly under threat from land grabs and exploitation of natural resources found on indigenous land. These resource grabs are largely driven by mega-corporations and governments often without the free, prior, and informed consent of the custodians of that land. Earth Day on April 22 is an important reminder to reclaim and respect the rights of indigenous communities across the globe who safeguard their lands and territories even as they fight for land sovereignty and liberation.

Land based investments in communal land

In the Kosiroi, Karamoja region of Uganda, the indigenous Tepeth community is mired in a battle over the communal land they have lived on for generations and which has long been used as grazing area for their animals. The community who are largely pastoralists and gatherers have lived here since before the existence of modern title deeds. They rely on the pasture and the water streams that flow through their land and forests for their daily sustenance. For them, their territory is not only vital for survival but also their identity.

The community is currently undergoing negotiations for the acquisition of 122 acres of land for a clinker plant and have been compensated UGX 1.3 billion. However, patriarchal norms dictated that women were excluded from negotiations for compensation in favour of men as the family head. TLC Mining Company is engaged in ongoing negotiations involving the Head of State, and only one woman out of the ten-person community cohort. The proposed mining project would have disastrous environmental consequences across the region, including pollution of water points, and destroying vegetation cover, trees, and soil. Whilst the community has voiced their concerns and begun organising for their Right to Say NO, their efforts have been met with intimidation and harassment by local political elites, government, and security agencies.

The scars and fears of forced evictions across East Africa

From the oil-rich Albertine region of Uganda to the Ogiek people in Kenya’s Mau Forest to the Loliondo in Tanzania, communities hold many scars and fears of forced evictions. Countless acres of communal land have been turned into freehold and leasehold titles. Over the years, the governments of Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania have taken some steps to register customary land, but these processes have been stymied by forces of corruption and greed. It is the people who have paid the heaviest price, evicted from land they and their families have lived on since before the borders of these nations were carved out by colonial powers in 1884.

At the height of the 2017 land disputes around the opens in a new windowTilenga Oil Project, in Buliisa, Uganda, the government started issuing Certificates of Customary Ownership (CCOs) of land. This was welcomed by most affected communities who cannot afford to process expensive land titles with costs as high as 90% compared to CCOs. The process was disrupted when it emerged that an investor, Charlotte Marine, had already surveyed the land covering the entire Kigwera sub-county. Dennis Obbo, the spokesperson for Uganda’s Ministry of Lands stated in April this year that “there is no headway since the mediation process that started is yet to be concluded.” The 600 CCOs that were being processed were halted. The Ugandan ministry claims it has so far issued 78,000 CCOs in the entire country and reports that 80% of Ugandans sit on customary land – the majority of whom are without any documentation and are vulnerable to evictions.

Hundreds of thousands – mainly women and children – are living in Internally Displaced People’s (IDPs) camps or as street children in urban areas. In Kigyayo, Bukinda and Kakopo villages in Kikuube district of Uganda, over 200,000 people have lost their homes after being evicted in the wave of oil industry-driven developments and land demands.

In the opens in a new windowOgiek community, at least 700 people, of whom 50% are women were kicked off their land in 2022. According to Lucy Claridge, Director of the International Lawyers Project, “they had strong suspicions that the eviction was linked to opens in a new windowcarbon credits,” despite the community having won a 2017 case to halt government plans to evict them from their ancestral land in the Mau Forest.  government plans to evict them from their ancestral land in the Mau Forest.

The opens in a new windowJune 2022 eviction of Masai community members from 1,500 square kilometres of land that was contested in Loliondo, Tanzania, drew widespread media attention and sparked conversations on customary land tenure security across East Africa.

Reports opens in a new windowshow that at least 69.1%opens PDF file of the total land area in Kenya is said to be community land and facing similar threats. Though the land administration policies differ like in Tanzania where land is government-owned, the impact on community rights is minimal since investors and state interests almost always supersede the interests of indigenous community landowners. These are examples of some of the challenges associated with customary land rights. It is also a signal that over 250 million East African Community (EAC) dwellers sit on a timebomb by settling on the land they call their ancestral land.

Capitalism and common land property systems

At the core of an increasingly destabilised global context intensified by countries in the Global North competing for control and exploitation of Africa’s raw materials and natural resources are the spectres of colonialism and the capitalist economy. These harmful systems have terrorised indigenous communities and maintained their underdevelopment across Africa despite their vast natural resource wealth. Governments often in collusion with transnational corporations and other actors have grabbed communal lands in the name of “development” and politics.

In all these cases, communities are rising to challenge the status quo, especially women. In Tepeth, one woman said, “the failure to pay royalties to traditional landowners has already prompted women to question their male traditional leaders about the decisions that have been decided upon without community input.”

There are many NGOs working and investing in the land rights question focusing on changing policies and implementation of laws. Yet these same laws have failed to codify the indigenous ways and practices that govern and protect communal land – and often opens in a new windowserve colonial and capitalist interests at the expense of people. “The good policies do not eradicate the racist policies,” as author Alex Vitale opens in a new windowwrites. “It’s insufficient – regardless of the intentions and actions of some of these individuals within structures the systems themselves persist in perpetuating systematic oppression.”

Ubuntu and other radical approaches to land sovereignty

It is in the interests of big capital to promote land deed practices that promote individualism over collectivism. Centring the power of the commons and collective rights to land, underpinned by the African philosophy of Ubuntu (“I am because you are”) is a opens in a new windowpowerful approach to revive and mount the defence of communal land rights. Ubuntu embodies justice for humanity, our land, and our territories. The interconnectedness of justice for humans, the environment, animals, and the ecosystems that sustain them is a first step in the fight for collective liberation.

At WoMin, the slogan, “women defend land, life and dignity” resonates as a call to action and an embodiment of radical reclamation of communal lands and territories, that centres women. One powerful example of this comes from the Sarara community in Samburu County, Northern Kenya. As Ruth Okara, a opens in a new windowNAMATI Kenya officer related, “In Sarara, elderly women keep files of records of all women and young women who have lived on the land and are part of the ownership of the communal land. Even when they get married or when an investor is interested in their land – the women are part of the land consultations and can choose whether to consent or not.”

We can also draw inspiration from Sierra Leone in West Africa, which passed two laws to boost the rights of rural landowners and women. The opens in a new windowCustomary Land Rights Act and the opens in a new windowLand Commission Act enacted in September 2022, empowered local landowners to negotiate the value of their land with investors and prevent it from being leased out without their prior informed consent.

The struggle for African’s land liberation as well as that of other indigenous communities across the world is critical to dismantling the destructive, rapacious capitalist system that rules and fools many. This Earth Day, as we honour the planet, the vital ecosystems and biodiversity that feed and sustain us – we must centre living ideas and alternatives such as agroecology and the saving and preservation of local seeds, alongside our struggles for land and other commons.