The UK White Paper on International Development published in 2009 explicitly links access to financial services with poverty reduction. In doing so, it echoes the policies the World Bank set out in its 2008 Policy Research Report on Finance. This paper offers a detailed analysis of these development policies and connects the current plans for the expansion of financial sectors in the developing world with policies that promote the acquisition of formal land title. The paper argues that as asset‐backed lending expands, commercial banks will come to play an increasingly important role in third world economies. In light of this, it reviews important first‐hand accounts of the difficulties of drafting legislation to protect women's access to land in the face of opposition from commercial lenders, using Tanzania and Uganda as illustrative examples. The paper assesses the implications of expanding access to credit for gender equality and concludes that it is difficult to reconcile the promotion of financial inclusion with the aim of international development to end poverty.
This article argues that most feminist legal theory has been located within a dominant and phallocentric legal centralist paradigm and that this has hindered feminism's engagement with legal pluralism. I will argue that theoretical work which privileges state law can at best furnish us with only partial accounts of women's experiences of law. Articulating a feminine view of the (legal) world requires an engagement with legal pluralism.
This article provides a critique of the final stages of Kenya's land law reform process, which has resulted in the approval of the 2012 Land Act, Land Registration Act, and National Land Commission Act. It argues that in spite of the constitutional and political importance of the new legislation, the process was marked by haste, lack of engagement by legislators, and little participation by citizens. The new laws can be viewed as a deeply disappointing outcome of a decade's struggle over land policy. The article explores the effects of the constitutional deadlines for new legislation; the contradictory role of civil society in relation to the new laws and the bureaucratic structures they create; and the redistributive intentions and potential of the new land legislation.Résumé: Cet article présente une critique des dernières étapes du processus de réforme de la loi foncière du Kenya, qui a abouti à l'approbation de la Loi "Land" de 2012, de la Loi sur l'enregistrement des terres, et de la Loi sur la Commission foncière nationale. Il fait valoir que, en dépit de l'importance constitutionnelle et politique de la nouvelle législation, le processus a été marqué par la hâte, le manque d'engagement des législateurs, et une participation minimale des citoyens. Les nouvelles lois peuvent être considérées comme un résultat très décevant de la lutte en cours depuis une décennie sur la politique foncière. L'article explore les effets des délais constitutionnels sur la nouvelle législation, le rôle contradictoire de la société civile en ce qui concerne les nouvelles lois et les structures bureaucratiques qu'elles engendrent, aussi bien que les intentions et le potentiel de la nouvelle législation foncière de redistribution.
In Kenya road building, widely viewed as an ‘unqualified human good’, is closely linked to an ‘Africa Rising’ narrative. In this paper the author argues that road building is an attempt to assert political authority derived from a longstanding developmentalist impulse, one in which private accumulation and spectacular public works go hand in hand. In light of massive infrastructural transformations, the author develops a conceptualisation of the right to the city: what is needed is a radical understanding of the city and its potentialities that wrests control of the idea away from a bureaucratic vision, and imbues it instead with collective meaning.
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