Land is central to people’s lives – and yet, all across Africa, many struggle to access, own and benefit from the land where they live and work.
Colonial histories and overlapping laws have left countless land claims unclear. Women, youth and Indigenous Peoples are often marginalized, denied ownership and excluded from inheritance.
But this changes when communities gain secure legal access to their land. People start growing food and planting trees not because donors or programs tell them to but because they envision a future for their families.
From the forests of Madagascar to the drylands of Burkina Faso, secure land rights are inspiring communities to invest in restoration, conservation and livelihoods with commitment and care.
The Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) recently hosted its Landscape Dialogues webinar series, which brought together communities across Africa to share their experiences in land governance.
Here are four key lessons we learned that can help secure equitable land rights across the continent.
Inclusive benefit sharing is central to creating the legal foundations for community ownership of land and forests. When communities are legally recognized and protected as land stewards, they receive clear rights, responsibilities and benefits from restoration.
The Farakaraina Forest in northeastern Madagascar illustrates this well. Previously threatened by agricultural expansion, the forest entered a new phase once the government granted formal management rights to local communities.
In 2024, the government renewed joint management contracts between the forestry service and nine surrounding villages. These contracts clearly defined community rights to protect, restore and use the forest, including designated zones for conservation and enterprise development.
With this legal recognition, villagers now lead forest patrols, replant 5,000 trees annually and run ecotourism initiatives that create jobs and strengthen local ownership.
In Tanzania, the GLFx Maasai Steppe chapter, led by TACCEI, works with nomadic Indigenous Maasai who traditionally lack secure legal access to their lands.
Many Maasai and Ngorongoro Indigenous communities have faced evictions linked to conservation, tourism and carbon projects implemented without community consent. Weak legal recognition of customary rights increases their vulnerability.
The chapter ensures that local people reap the benefits of land restoration through school nurseries and women’s income initiatives such as kitchen gardens and entrepreneurship training.
Even when rights have not been formalized, involving communities in restoration helps build shared responsibility, strengthens claims to land and encourages long-term stewardship.
Inclusive customary land laws refer to traditional norms and governance practices that have been adapted or formalized to ensure that women, youth, Indigenous Peoples and displaced groups can access land fairly.
When customary rules become inclusive and are supported by statutory recognition people can invest in restoration without fear of losing land.
In Tanzania, the 1999 Village Land Act requires village councils to include women in decision-making bodies. Combined with training and mobilization, this law has strengthened local governance, improved women’s participation and made land access more predictable for vulnerable groups.
In Burkina Faso, the non-profit Tree Aid has worked with customary and statutory systems to create inclusive forest governance. Communities gained secure land rights supported by 21 national decrees.
Local institutions developed 22 forest management plans and 34 land charters, establishing transparent rules for land use. Women now lead 206 village tree enterprises, and incomes have increased significantly as tree cover expanded by more than 437 hectares.
In northern Ghana, the GLFx Tamale chapter works within longstanding customary systems to give young people a greater role in restoration.
In 2023, with the support of local chiefs, community by-laws were updated to grant youth formal responsibilities in tree planting, bushfire control and management of communal woodlots.
This blend of tradition and youth leadership has enabled young people to restore riverbanks, revive sacred groves and start small enterprises like beekeeping and nurseries.
Legal literacy bridges the gap between rights written on paper and rights people can truly exercise. In rights-based restoration, it includes training on land laws, dispute resolution, negotiation and awareness of the right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC).
When people understand their rights, they can engage in restoration confidently, negotiate benefits and hold institutions accountable.
In Kaani, Kenya, Kijani Mtaani runs a rights-based program that combines legal training with agroecology, youth-run nurseries and intergenerational dialogues.
Paralegals and facilitators guide women through inheritance rights, case examples and practical steps for approaching local authorities. Over 50 women have now been trained, and 15 have secured their own land use agreements.
FPIC is both a principle and a process ensuring that communities, especially Indigenous Peoples, customary land users, women and youth have the right to use their land and to permit or deny external projects.
This means:
FPIC protects tenure and prevents dispossession. When it is respected, conservation, carbon, tourism and agro-industry projects are less likely to result in evictions, restricted access or harmful land use decisions.
However, FPIC requires time, transparency, meaningful participation and binding commitments such as written agreements, benefit sharing and grievance mechanisms. When communities participate fully, land restoration becomes a shared process that can reduce conflict and promote cooperation.
In Malawi, the GLFx Lilongwe chapter has observed how restoration efforts suffer when FPIC is not meaningfully practiced. Competing land claims, insecure tenure and weak legal protection for customary rights create conditions where communities have little say in how their land is used.
Government-backed agro-industrial projects and initiatives such as the Green Belt Initiative, along with some carbon projects like Restore Africa, often advance without adequate consultation, limiting access to fertile land and excluding communities from benefits.
Fragmented legislation, gender inequalities and conflicting local and national priorities further weaken stewardship. These governance gaps have resulted in mistrust, disputes and sometimes active resistance, illustrating the consequences of ignoring FPIC processes.
The chapter calls on Malawi to strengthen legal reforms, secure tenure, enhance participation and integrate policies to create inclusive, resilient landscapes to enable restoration to succeed.
A land rights approach blends law and custom, livelihoods and ecology, markets and safeguards. When people have secure legal access to land, they invest more deeply in protection, restoration and enterprises such as nurseries, beekeeping and ecotourism.
The examples across Africa show two realities: where legal rights are present, restoration flourishes; where rights are weak, communities face barriers yet continue to push for change.
It’s crucial that we strengthen legal foundations, inclusive governance and FPIC to ensure that our homes, our livelihoods and our future remains in the hands of the people who care for it.
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