Overview

Finalist for the African Studies Association's 2021 Best Book Prize. Explores the limits of law in changing unequal land relations in Kenya. Why, despite the introduction of new land laws beginning in 2012, has there been an increase in land grabbing in Kenya? Why has legislation failed to address long standing grievances about grossly unequal land distribution? This important book suggests that questions of justice should be central to discussions of African land reform. Constitutional reformers in Kenya promised transformative changes in land relations. However, the reality has disappointed. Land law reforms since 2010 have been more concerned with the administration of land and with bureaucratic power than with the real consequences of unequal access to land for ordinary Kenyans. Manji documents this thwarted struggle and surveys the prospects for genuine change. Published in association with the British Institute in Eastern Africa. Ambreena Manji is Professor of Land Law and Development at the School of Law and Politics, Cardiff University. Between 2010 and 2014, she was Director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa. Her books include The Politics of Land Reform in Africa (2006). Vita Books: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan and South Africa.

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9781847013446

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The book makes several important contributions to scholarship on land politics in Kenya. -- Canadian Journal of African Studies Building on her own previous work, as well as the work of notable scholars such as Ghai, McAuslan and Harbeson, Manji provides a detailed overview of the history of the land struggle beginning in the colonial era, through the various commissions of inquiry, the formulation of the NLP, and the incorporation of land issues into the Constitution and drafting of the 2012 land laws. -- Journal of Modern African Studies

Author Information

AMBREENA MANJI is Professor of Land Law and Development at the School of Law and Politics, Cardiff University, where she co-founded the Law and Global Justice Centre and its African Feminist Judgments project and Global Justice Pro Bono programme. She was President of the African Studies Association UK 2018-2020 and Director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa 2010 - 2014. Her books include The Politics of Land Reform in Africa and The Struggle for Land and Justice in Kenya. Prior to her appointment at Cardiff, she held academic posts at the Universities of Warwick and Keele and was a visiting Fellow at the Faculty of Law, University of Cape Town and at Dar es Salaam Law School. In 2016 and 2018, she was a Faculty Member at the Initiative for Strategic Litigation in Africa in Johannesburg. She serves on the Advisory Board of the Africa Research Institute (London); and the Advisory Council of the Initiative for Strategic Litigation in Africa (Johannesburg). She is a member of the Editorial Boards of Social and Legal Studies, Feminist Legal Studies and Law and Humanities.

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