Who has control over land and why it matters: Land investments, land tenure, and global governance in sub-Saharan Africa

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My postdoctoral fellowship project 'Who has control over land and why it matters: Land investments, land tenure and global governance in sub-Saharan Africa' explores land governance at global, national, and local levels in different post-conflict settings in sub-Saharan Africa. It is particularly concerned with the recognition and protection of the land rights of local people and communities in land acquisition processes by foreign companies and interrogates global governance mechanisms in this regard. Literature on global norms diffusion and human rights norms proliferation tells us a lot about the processes, actors and agreements at the international and global level. But there is very little concrete evidence of how such norms become implemented and 'work' to protect land rights at the domestic and local levels in cases of large-scale land investments. My PhD has attempted to fill this research gap by analysing the role of domestic land tenure regimes - institutions that regulate the access to and the control over land. These institutions vary across space in most African countries meaning that different rules around land exist in different regions within the same country. Studying 17 cases of large-scale land investments across Uganda and Sierra Leone, I saw strong variation in the way that global norms were invoked in these projects. I argued that land tenure regimes constrain and shape the ways in which global codes of conduct for responsible investments gain traction and are able to protect local land rights in large-scale investments. Building on these findings, the postdoctoral fellowship not only consolidates this PhD but also further engages with questions pertaining to i) the usefulness and purpose of global governance norms in protecting land rights in different commodity sectors, ii) the nature and variation of local land tenure regimes and their relevance for global governance initiatives, iii) the potential salience of the 'post-conflict' setting for both large-scale foreign land investments and accompanying global governance norms, and iv) the 'land question' in wider comparative perspective in sub-Saharan Africa. As part of the postdoctoral fellowship, I will deliver four single-authored articles in peer-reviewed journals as well as organise and facilitate a multi-stakeholder workshop on post-conflict land governance. I will also undertake a limited amount of further fieldwork in northern Uganda, combined with an institutional visit at Gulu University. The data collected during this fieldwork will be used to consolidate findings from my PhD and to inform two of the journal articles. This project seeks to be comparative in nature. To strengthen the comparative analysis in the wider African context, I will integrate perspectives from South Africa into my repertoire of knowledge on land governance and African land politics. To do so, I will undertake an institutional visit at the Institute for Poverty, Land, and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape.