Land reform and participation of the rural poor in the development process of African countries

Such participation requires that these people not only share in the distribution of the benefits of development, be they the material benefits of increased output or other benefits considered enhancing to the quality of life, but that they share also in the task of creating these benefits. The subsequent sections of this paper focus on establishing the need for, and role of, land reform and other agrarian reforms that modify existing tenure systems and other institutional arrangements which presently protect subsistence opportunities but impede increased participation of rural people in the development process. The analysis is cast in the specific context of African countries, south of the Sahara, where it can be shown that this is indeed the major bottleneck to increasing rural participation in the development process.