Land Tenure Center Newsletter
Number 81, Spring 2001, p. 10
The following is from a student in the Ph.D. in Development Studies Program at the Center. As with most graduate students, he often reflects not only as to whether his work will ever end but also as to what impact it might have.
Thinking about how long it will take to complete my degree makes me feel that graduate school has become my one and only career. Yet now that I’m preparing my dissertation proposal, I can see another career ahead, one that might actually help the basis of future planning in my country’s land reform program.
My work focuses on the criteria used for selecting beneficiaries of Zimbabwe’s government assisted land reform schemes. Given disparities in landholdings and cultural barriers impeding the flow of land among Zimbabwe’s agricultural sectors, land resettlement for the rural poor is still viewed as the best way to achieve both economic growth and stability. Fundamental issues that must be addressed are the processes used to acquire land and to select settler beneficiaries. Past selection criteria emphasized the poor and landless, who lacked farm management skills and experience. The selection criteria for government-assisted resettlements have been criticized on the grounds that the landless lack the means of production necessary to bring their arable allocations under cultivation. Also, mixing beneficiaries from different backgrounds and localities made it difficult to develop a sense of community and establish social networks that are important in reducing production risk. These problems resulted in the benefits of the program requiring a longer time horizon and a much flatter learning curve for the beneficiaries than originally believed.
My dissertation will complement LTC’s ongoing project, "Land Reform and Resettlement in Zimbabwe": http://www.ies.wisc.edu/ltc/zimpfl.html.
Kizito Mazvimavi received a Master’s in Agricultural Economics from the University of Zimbabwe. He entered the Development Studies Program in 1999.
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