Causes and management of land conflicts in Tanzania: A Case of farmers versus pastoralists

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Date

2016

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Abstract

Land conflicts are on the increase in many parts of Tanzania. Though the same existed even in the planned economy era 1961 to 1985, there has been an escalation of thesame since Tanzania opted for the.free market economy in the mid-1980s. While land corif!.icts are experienced by all walk<; of life and people engaged in different economic activities, those between farmers and pastoralists have been more dread.fit! leading to loss of life and property in many instances. The aim of this paper is twofold: firstly, to examine the factors that have contributed to the causes and persistence of .farmer-pastoralist conflicts in Tanzania; and secondly, to examine the strategies that have been applied in managing .farmer-pastoralist conflicts. The paper contains a review that is organised into three .fundamental sections. After introduction, Section Two discusses the literature that analyses the conflict by drawing on the social, historical and economic causes. In Section Three, the papeiĀ· introduces some of the key framework<; used within the peace and conflict literature, particularly in reference to the dffering notions of conflict management, conflict resolution and conflict transformation that could be applied in solving or managing conflicts between .farmers and pastoralists in Tanzania for the good of both groups. The paper makes two conclusions: firstl y, the farmer-pastoralist conflict tends to be best explained through an interpretive lens that sees many processes impacting on the highlighted issue. Whilefarmer-pastoralist corifl.icts have been produced by social, historical, economic and discursive factors; the former three factors have dominated most of the analysis within the literature. Secondly, there is no single solution for managing the conflicts. However, to effectively manage the conflicts communities need to adopt a multidimensional approach that takes into account a range of the contributing factors .

Description

Uongozi Journal of Management and Development Dynamics, 2016; 27(2): 45 - 68

Keywords

Farmers, Pastoralists, Land conflict, Conflict management, Tanzania

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