Towards a holistic land law evaluation in sub-Saharan Africa: A novel framework with an application to Rwanda’s organic land law 2005

Abstract

Land laws provide a legal basis for addressing a country’s land-related strategies and are the central land policy instruments through which governments realise land policy objectives. Considering their vital role, it is imperative that land laws be evaluated to ensure that policy objectives are followed and that the laws are not ineffective or counterproductive. The extant literature, however, provides only a fragmentary basis for evaluation. The present study addresses this gap and constructs a novel framework to support the holistic evaluation of land law performance in the context of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The framework was developed through a review of systematically selected literature on land laws in SSA. Four key evaluation perspectives emerged: land access; land tenure; land use and development; and land administration institutions. The framework was then used to assess the overall performance of Rwanda’s Organic Land Law (OLL) 2005 through a content analysis of secondary data on the land reform outcomes. The OLL application suggests that the framework may provide stakeholders with insights into the overall effects of land law and potential areas of improvement. However, the framework must be further explored in various cases of SSA countries to validate its functionality.