Received: 2025-08-22  |  Accepted: 2025-10-26  |  Published: 2025-12-30

Title

Impact of external powers on land governance in Africa: critical junctures and the search for social justice


Abstract

Land governance in much of Africa remains rooted in inherited colonial structures, and African governments have yet to develop a pathway toward social justice amidst ongoing global neoliberal influences. The paper sought to identify and critically analyse how historical and ongoing critical junctures have created opportunities for land reclamation and social justice in Africa. Specific critical junctures analysed in the paper include the Cold War era, structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), land grabbing under globalisation, the establishment of foreign military bases in Africa, the transition to multiparty democracy, post-conflict reconstruction periods, the establishment of Pan-African institutions and frameworks, and digital land governance reforms. The paper employs an integrative review approach to examine these critical junctures and the opportunities they have provided to African governments over time. Findings from the identified critical junctures show that geopolitical dynamics, combined with local elitism and entrenched cultures of patronage politics, influence ownership, access, and control over land in Africa. The paper observes that Western hegemonic forces still retain significant influence over the direction of land governance, which explains why most of the critical junctures that presented opportunities for transforming the legacies of skewed post-independence land ownership patterns were not fully utilised or partially utilised.


Keywords

critical junctures, historical injustices, land governance, reforms, social justice, Africa


JEL classifications

D02 , D18


URI

http://jssidoi.org/ird/article/221


DOI


Pages

71-83


Funding


This is an open access issue and all published articles are licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Authors

Zvoushe, Hardlife
University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa https://www.uj.ac.za
Articles by this author in: CrossRef |  Google Scholar

Journal title

Insights into Regional Development

Volume

7


Number

4


Issue date

December 2025


Issue DOI


ISSN

ISSN 2345-0282 (online)


Publisher

VšĮ Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Center, Vilnius, Lithuania

Cited

Google Scholar

Article views & downloads

HTML views: 98  |  PDF downloads: 76

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