Land Reform and Peacebuilding in Côte d’Ivoire: Strange Bedfellows?


Jul 31, 2022 | Matthew Mitchell
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Though often seen as critical for promoting economic development, land reform is a deeply political process. Considering the symbolic and material significance of land to the hundreds of millions of rural inhabitants in the Global South, the stakes involved in agrarian reform are often high and the process is sometimes politically explosive. As the case of Côte d’Ivoire in West Africa reveals, land reform can indeed contribute to both fueling and resolving violent conflict.

This raises the question: how should land reform be approached in politically divided post-conflict contexts characterized by a state of fragile peace?

In a recent study, I consider this question by examining the case of Côte d’Ivoire. Once a beacon of economic and political stability, Côte d’Ivoire descended into violent conflict in the early 2000s. Following a ten-year period of ‘neither war nor peace’, a post-electoral crisis in 2010-2011 led to the death of over 3,000 people and the displacement of thousands.