Legal empowerment for local resource control

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economic resources (for evidence of this from Senegal, see e.g. Cotula and
Sylla, 2006). In addition, where the allocation of resource rights to group
members is made by a political body, a risk exists that allocations are used
as an instrument for political patronage – favouring groups aligned with the
ruling political party.
3.1.3. What resource rights?
Beyond the identification of the right holding entity, a key challenge in
vesting resource rights with local groups is defining what these rights are, in
relation to their content (e.g. full ownership, long or short-term use), source
(e.g. legislation, customary law) and object (land and/or other resources).
This issue is shaped by the legal context prevailing in many African
countries, which was outlined above (chapter 2.2.2) – namely the central
role of the state in land/natural resource ownership and control; the limited
incidence of registered private ownership; the growing legal recognition of
local (“customary”) resource rights in several African countries, albeit with
qualifications; and the separation between rights over land and rights over
other resources (forests, minerals, petroleum, water, etc.), which entails
that, even where legislation does protect local land rights, control of other
resources remains in the hands of the state.
Ownership vs management/use rights
Consistently with this overall context, very rarely have legal reforms to
strengthen local resource control led to the transfer of ownership rights to
the range of collective right holders identified in the previous section. More
commonly, local resource users are vested with various combinations of use
and management rights, while the central state retains control over
valuable resources.
This tends to be the case where resource rights are vested with local
government bodies. In Senegal, local governments (the “rural
communities”) are responsible for the management of village lands (the
“zones de terroir”) but do not own them – it is the state that “holds”
(“détient”) them (article 2 of the 1964 Land Law). Similarly, in Tanzania,
although local governments (“village councils”) are responsible for the
management of village lands (which constitute most of the land in the
country), ownership is vested with the president in trust for the nation