John W. Bruce, Mark S. Freudenberger and Tidiane Ngaido (1995):
Old Wine in New Bottles:

1. Introduction

In the post-independence decades, almost every African country attempted to reform its indigenous land tenure systems. Such systems are usually called "customary" or "traditional," though it is now generally appreciated that they evolve over time. They have also sometimes been characterized as "communal," though they often provide households with perpetual, heritable rights to home sites and farms. They are today sometimes referred to as "community-based" systems. The use of this term both avoids the misleading implications of the older terms and points up the distinction between these rules and those created by national statute.

The new elites who came to power at independence in most African countries believed that these community-based tenure systems were outmoded and had to be replaced. Legislation to replace these systems were enacted. In 1960 over 90 percent of Africa’s land was held under indigenous land tenure systems, and such systems continue to determine the actual use of the same amount of land today, whatever formal legal changes may have taken place. Attempts to reform those systems altered and influenced them, often in ways unanticipated by the reformers, but the systems retained their coherence and roots in local society.

The reform enterprise has not fared well; indeed, the purpose of this paper is to explore new directions that may be more promising. We first review the experience with "replacement" models that sought to replace community-based tenure with rights prescribed by national law, a review that draws heavily on an earlier paper by Bruce (1993). We then turn to the more incremental "adaptation" approach.