Land conflicts among smallholder communities are becoming common in Tanzania.
Mvomero District in Morogoro Region is one of the areas where such conflicts have been
occurring frequently. This study was conducted in four villages of Mvomero District,
namely Mkindo, Bungoma, Kambala and Misufini and involved about 50 respondents
from each village. The main objective was to assess the relationship between land tenure
systems and occurrence of land conflicts in smallholder communities in Mvomero District.
Data were collected by mainly using a household questionnaire and focus group
discussions.The Statistical Package for SocialSciences (SPSS) programme was used to
analyse the data.Among other analyses, binary logistic regression was used to determine
impact of land tenure systems on chances of land conflicts occurring in the study area.
Descriptive analysis was used to analyse demographic characteristics of the respondents
and land governance, while an index scale was applied to measure the extent of
community awareness. The findings revealed that 100% of the entire land in the study area
was village land, thus customary tenure rights were applied to govern land matters. Based
on the score results obtained from the index scale, the majority of the respondents (53.6%)
were aware of land tenure systems in the research area compared to 46.4% who were not
aware of the systems, which implies that sensitization initiatives are still needed to
increase community awareness. The major factors for land conflicts were: scarcity of
resources, delaying in solving land conflicts, poor community participation in land
administration, corruption and lack of land use plans. The recommendations for
resolutionof land conflicts are: application of land use plans, good governance on land and
increasing awareness on land rights.