• Around 73% of land in sub-Saharan Africa is held under customary systems, far above the global average.

• Yet only 1% of these lands are formally recognized in national legal frameworks, according to a new report.

• The gap exposes farmers and communities—especially women—to land insecurity, disputes, and land grabs.

Customary land systems dominate across sub-Saharan Africa, but they remain largely unrecognized by national governments, according to a new report on land rights and governance released in late February by the x

The study finds that 73% of land in sub-Saharan Africa is held under customary tenure. In practice, this means that nearly three-quarters of land in the region is managed through locally accepted systems—including traditional authorities, family lineages, village communities, and customary leaders.

This share is far higher than the global average of 42%, equivalent to about 5.5 billion hectares worldwide. Yet the report notes that sub-Saharan Africa ranks last globally when it comes to official state recognition of these lands.

Only 1% of customary lands in the region are formally recognized in national legal frameworks, compared with 8% worldwide.

An African paradox

The report highlights a striking contradiction. Although 28% of all mapped customary lands worldwide are located in Africa, governments have translated very little of that knowledge into legal rights.

By comparison, North America and Europe account for 30% of mapped customary lands globally, followed by Asia with 18% and Latin America and the Caribbean with 12%.

In other words, while data on the geographic distribution of community-managed lands in Africa is improving, these territories are rarely converted into formal legal rights recorded in land registries, cadastral systems, or national laws.

This gap leaves large portions of land in sub-Saharan Africa in a legal gray zone, contributing to persistent land insecurity in the agricultural sector. Even when land has been mapped, it can still be legally classified as state land or as territory without a clearly recognized owner.

The situation makes farmers particularly vulnerable to land grabs or development projects imposed without the full consent of local communities and without proper protection of their land rights.

Women face especially high risks. Across many countries, they already have less secure land rights than men, limiting their ability to invest in agriculture or gain access to key inputs such as water and farming supplies—even though women represent 49% of the workforce in agrifood systems, according to the FAO.

Globally, women landowners report land insecurity significantly more often than men when asked whether their rights would be maintained in the event of divorce or the death of a spouse, the report notes. The disparity is particularly pronounced in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Western Asia.

Beyond social and economic impacts, the report also points to environmental stakes. In Africa, as in other parts of the world, customary lands contain a large share of intact forests and ‘irreversible’ carbon stocks, meaning ecosystems whose carbon storage capacity cannot easily be restored if destroyed.

Without formal recognition, these territories—and the environmental assets they contain—remain vulnerable.

In response, the report’s authors call for stronger national commitments across Africa to secure customary land rights and improve women’s access to land ownership.

While several countries in the region have introduced new frameworks for land governance and policy reforms, the report argues that further steps are needed.

Efforts to recognize and legally protect customary landholders must be intensified, the authors say, both for the benefit of local communities and for global environmental goals. Beyond legal recognition, many communities will also require financial and technical support to address social, economic, and environmental challenges.

Existing initiatives include community-based natural resource management and co-management agreements, which treat customary communities as equal partners in designing and implementing climate solutions.

The report also stresses the importance of applying the principle of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), respecting community self-determination, and integrating Indigenous knowledge into land, climate, and governance policies.

Espoir Olodo