On violent conflict, land scarcity, and power in an urban frontier in Congo

The relationship between land and violent conflict in Africa has long been a focal point for scholarly inquiry and development policy. According to an influential neo-Malthusian narrative, violent land conflicts erupt when land scarcity, population pressure, and state failure combine. In this paper we join a growing corpus of researchers arguing that the links between violent conflict and land scarcity are not linear, but embedded in complex and entangled social, economic and political processes. Using an extended case-study approach we explore land disputes in the Panzi neighbourhood of Bukavu, which is situated in the conflict-affected eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo and appears to embody a neo-Malthusian crisis. We present three main findings. First, we demonstrate how large-scale violent conflict can create opportunities for new actors to reconfigure the political order, generating struggles and negotiations over public authority and land rights among a multitude of more or less self-proclaimed public authorities and land claimants. Second, we show that although armed conflict reconfigures the links between public authority and land rights, it does not radically change how land is governed, or how people gain and hold on to property. Both before and after major political ruptures, people gain land rights through daily negotiations with competing public authorities. Third, we show that these struggles and negotiations do not take place on a level playing field. Rather, well-connected and wealthy actors with access to military power tend to fare better in such contests. Based on our research, we conclude that land scarcity functions as a contextual amplifier, rather than a direct cause of violent conflict. However, more research and conceptual work is needed to better understand this link.