Tanzanian land is largely controlled by Tanzanians

In Tanzania, there has been a tendency to emphasize the role of foreigners in the grabbing of land and natural resources. Investor-friendly policies and laws, so the story goes, were dictated by donors and international financial institutions and foreign investors infringe on local rights to land unhindered.

An article recently published by Rasmus Hundsbæk Pedersen, postdoc at DIIS, explores these assumptions and finds that the processes governing access to land in the country are much more polycentric. National and local level actors are most often as important, if not more, as the international ones.

Thus, the formulation of land policies has largely been controlled by Tanzanians in the Ministry of Lands and some foreign actors have pushed for better protection of existing rights to land. In order to understand these processes and how they affect access to land, empirical research into the relations between actors at all levels is required.