Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

It has been argued by academics and development practitioners alike that land on secure tenure provides opportunities for farmers in rural areas to invest in land improvement and increase their productivity. For this reason, the Zambian government has created resettlement schemes – these being blocks of planned and serviced land accommodating settlers-community- people without land. I therefore explored how governance practices have affected the farmers on secure land tenure in the resettlement schemes in Northern Zambia.

I explored this problem by answering the question of: How does governance of the land resettlement schemes and government bureaucracy shape the economic and livelihood choices of settlers and would be settlers in the resettlement schemes? I used governance as a theoretical framework. The findings show that there are multiple actors involved in managing the resettlement schemes but these are not working together. The majority of actors are not aware of the Zambia National Resettlement Policy. The different actors have shaped the lives of settlers differently.