Thea Hilhorst & An Ansoms 
Losing your Land [PDF ebook] 
Dispossession in the Great Lakes

Examines a new aspect of one of the highest profile issues facing Africa today-land-grabbing-and shows the widespread impact of small-scale dispossession.






Dispossession of land on a small scale can have as great an impact on living conditions as large-scale land-grabs. With the increasing commodification of land, new forms of dispossession, in urban as well as rural districts, are also gaining in importance.

This book looks at this largely uninvestigated issue through case studies in the Eastern DRC, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda: here the loss of land often represents the loss of people’s livelihoods inthese areas of extreme land scarcity in highly populated regions. In the post-conflict states of the Great Lakes, governance challenges increase the risk of dispossession of the already poor and vulnerable: formal institutions are weak or biased; customary authorities have lost some of their moral authority. The cases in this book show in particular how local power dynamics, often rooted in history, bear upon the processes of land competition, dispossession and land grabbing. This timely volume will be important not only for those in African Studies, but for those in development studies, as well as practitioners and policy-makers worldwide.


An Ansoms is assistant professor in development studies at the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium); Thea Hilhorst is a senior advisor at the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam.

Table des matières

Introduction: Causes and risks of dispossession and land grabbing in the Great Lakes region – An Ansoms

Introduction: Causes and risks of dispossession and land grabbing in the Great Lakes region – Thea Hilhorst

Land grabbing and development history: The Congolese experience – Jean-Philippe Peemans

This land is my land: Land grabbing in Ituri (DRC) – Daniel Fahey

Land grabbing by mining companies: Local contentions and state reconfiguration in South-Kivu (DRC) – Sara Geenen

Land grabbing by mining companies: Local contentions and state reconfiguration in South-Kivu (DRC) – Jana Hönke

Competition over soil and subsoil: Land grabbing by local elites in South Kivu (Eastern DRC) – Klara Claessens

Competition over soil and subsoil: Land grabbing by local elites in South Kivu (Eastern DRC) – Emery Mushagalusa Mudinga

Competition over soil and subsoil: Land grabbing by local elites in South Kivu (Eastern DRC) – An Ansoms

The continuities in contested land acquisitions in Uganda by Mathijs van Leeuwen, Ilse Zeemeijer, Doreen Kobusingye, Charles Muchunguzi, Linda Haartsen and Claudia Piacenza

Land grabbing and power relations in Burundi: Practical norms and real governance – Aymar Nyenyezi

Land grabbing and power relations in Burundi: Practical norms and real governance – An Ansoms

Land grabbing and land tenure security in post-genocide Rwanda – Chris Huggins

The reorganization of rural space in Rwanda: Habitat concentration, land consolidation and collective marshland cultivation by An Ansoms, Giuseppe Cioffo, Chris Huggins and Jude Murison

‘Modernizing Kigali’: The struggle for space in the Rwandan urban context – Vincent Manirakiza and An Ansoms

Conclusion – An Ansoms and Thea Hilhorst

A propos de l’auteur

AYMAR NYENYEZI BISOKA is Assistant Professor at the University of Mons, Belgium.