Land Tenure Systems And Conflicts In Rural Smallholder Communities Of Mvomero District, Tanzania

ABSTRACT

Land conflicts among smallholder communities are becoming common in Tanzania. Mvomero District in Morogoro Region is one of the areas where such conflicts have been occurring frequently. This study was conducted in four villages of Mvomero District, namely Mkindo, Bungoma, Kambala and Misufini and involved about 50 respondents from each village. The main objective was to assess the relationship between land tenure systems and occurrence of land conflicts in smallholder communities in Mvomero District. Data were collected by mainly using a household questionnaire and focus group discussions.The Statistical Package for SocialSciences (SPSS) programme was used to analyse the data.Among other analyses, binary logistic regression was used to determine impact of land tenure systems on chances of land conflicts occurring in the study area. Descriptive analysis was used to analyse demographic characteristics of the respondents and land governance, while an index scale was applied to measure the extent of community awareness. The findings revealed that 100% of the entire land in the study area was village land, thus customary tenure rights were applied to govern land matters. Based on the score results obtained from the index scale, the majority of the respondents (53.6%) were aware of land tenure systems in the research area compared to 46.4% who were not aware of the systems, which implies that sensitization initiatives are still needed to increase community awareness. The major factors for land conflicts were: scarcity of resources, delaying in solving land conflicts, poor community participation in land administration, corruption and lack of land use plans. The recommendations for resolutionof land conflicts are: application of land use plans, good governance on land and increasing awareness on land rights.