Safeguarding Inheritance: Challenges and Opportunities in African Societies

Abstract

Challenges and opportunities in African societies presents findings from a five country study commissioned by the Chronic Poverty Research Centre, which explored the relationship between inheritance practice and socio-economic equity and opportunities being enhanced or prevented. Policy Notes for Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda and Ghana, and a policy brief and working paper are available in this series. Data were collected through interviews with representatives of governmental and non-governmental agencies working on inheritance and property rights related issues as well as review of research and policy literature. (Bird, et al., 2004, Mutangadura, 2004, Rose, 2006). This is happening in many countries, with several recently amending their statutory laws, and rights-based organisations taking various initiatives to improve equity in inheritance practice. Nevertheless, much remains to be done to address the links between inheritance rights and practices and poverty. Inheritance is an important way of transferring, or being excluded from the transfer, of people’s accumulated physical and financial capital. The transfer of physical assets from the parent generation to the next can provide the start-up material for the younger generations’ more independent future livelihoods and economic productivity (Fafchamps and Quisumbing, 2005). However, exclusion from assets inheritance can exacerbate vulnerability to chronic intergenerationally transmitted poverty (Bird, et al., 2004).Inheritance law and customary practices in African countries can exclude individuals, particularly women and orphaned children, from inheriting the property (including land, housing and other productive resources) that they had access to while their husbands or fathers were alive (see Cooper, 2008 and 2010). This has been linked to economic decline and poverty traps (Bird et al,, 2004; Human Rights Watch, 2003; Strickland, 2004). Reforming statutory and customary systems could address gender discrimination in inheritance practices (Benschop and Sait, 2006; Bird, O’Neil, Bolt, 2004; Davies, 2005).