Impacts of Privatization of Customary Land Rights in Zambia: A Comparative Study of Rural and Peri‐urban Locations

In its quest for development, Zambia is pursuing a land policy that facilitates privatization of customary land. This article investigates the effects of privatization in terms of how it shapes people's behaviour and perception of private tenure and related tenure dynamics. Findings have shown that the appetite to privatize land is growing stronger in peri‐urban areas as land becomes more scarce. Furthermore, privatization of land appears to be a threat to traditional political structures as allegiance and loyalty towards chiefs diminish and tension and struggles over land in peri‐urban areas increase. Similarly, privatization of land erodes people's faith in the role that cultural and ancestral beliefs play in traditional land management. Also, people in rural areas tend to favour private tenure more if ‘privatization of customary land’ means allocation of land to outsiders. If, by contrast, the phrase is taken to mean communities registering their own land, peri‐urban communities tend to have a stronger desire to register land. Furthermore, rural communities were found to be less informed about land policy and seemed less keen to be involved in land policy processes when compared to peri‐urban residents. However, rural people may have no reason to inform themselves about land policy until they realise that the policy is likely to affect them.     

Hand pollination,mass spraying,and hybrid seedlings: Do these technologies affect the welfare of smallholder cocoa farmers in Ghana?

Adoption of cocoa production technologies has the potential to improve productivity and welfare of smallholder producers in low-income countries. While studies investigating synergies in agricultural technologies are growing, empirical evidence on the determinants and impacts of adopting multiple cocoa production technologies on smallholder farmers' welfare is scarce. Therefore, this study contributes by analyzing the determinants and effects of adoption of multiple cocoa production technologies on the welfare of smallholder farmers in Ghana. To achieve this, we used the multinomial endogenous switching regression and multivalued inverse probability regression adjustment models to a random sample of 2233 cocoa farmers from Ghana. The results show that various socioeconomic characteristics (e.g., farmer's age and experience), resource constraints (e.g., land ownership and credit access), market-related factors (e.g., distance to the market), and production shocks (e.g., rainfall) influence the adoption of multiple cocoa production technologies. Furthermore, the results reveal that adopting multiple production technologies significantly improves cocoa yields, gross income, per capita consumption expenditure, and reduces household food insecurity. Therefore, policies, such as financial support, need to be aimed at improving and strengthening smallholder cocoa producers' capacity to adopt synergistic conventional and non-conventional cocoa production technologies to maximize smallholder farmers' welfare.