Stakeholder access to lands for agriculture and land governance: A systematic review

Abstract Equitable access to agricultural land remains a central challenge for sustainable and inclusive rural development in Africa. Despite the recognized importance of this issue, a comprehensive and systematic synthesis of land conflict types, key governance actors, and prevailing tenure systems is scarcely documented across Africa. This review fills this gap by applying a transparent and reproducible systematic review protocol – including database searching, screening, and thematic coding – which resulted in the selection of 55 studies from Web of Science, ScienceDirect, and African Journals Online. The findings reveal that inheritance (63.64%) is the most prevalent land tenure regime, while borrowing is the least common (23.67%), indicating a shift away from communal arrangements. Land conflicts are predominantly centred on ownership (28.57%) and usage rights (25%), often exacerbated by fraudulent allocations. The review underscores the central, yet often conflicting, roles of state and customary institutions, with 80% of studies highlighting corruption as a major impediment to effective land law enforcement. Women are identified as the most vulnerable actors in land access and security. The study concludes that transparent, inclusive land governance reforms, which harmonize formal and customary systems, are urgently needed to mitigate conflicts and empower marginalized stakeholders.