The past decade has ushered in an era of increasingly contentious land politics in Zambia,
with investors, the government, and chiefs simultaneously blamed for injustices in land
allocation. These conflicts over land have been exacerbated, and at times caused by the lack
of transparency and available data on the status of land. While a variety of actors has real
grievances with the security and efficiency of the current system of land allocation,
smallholder farmers bear the brunt of the risk of continuing the status quo in land policy. As
active land markets in customary land encroach on traditional systems of land management,
smallholder farmer populations have been pushed off ancestral land. These farmers have
limited legal or institutional recourse in the current system due to the lack of recognition of
land sales on customary land, due to outdated, non-comprehensive land policies. Thus, the
ability of smallholder farmers to access or continue to access arable land is often at the mercy
of the decisions of a generally well-meaning but unequipped individual, the traditional chief.
These chiefs lack the resources and training to efficiently and objectively allocate land.