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The livelihoods of the rural poor in Africa rely on secure rights to land and natural resources. Secure rights are a critical factor to conditioning how the rural poor in developing countries can benefit from markets. Resource tenure systems set the arrangements for rights, rules, structures and processes that regulate access to land and its use. These formal or informal systems influence who controls land, and who can use land resources for how long and under what conditions. Tenure security and insecurity are relative concepts. They refer to a bundle of rights held by one or more persons. These rights are described in several dimensions, such as type, breadth, duration and certainty of exercise (Place, 2009). Tenure security can be defined as the degree of reasonable confidence not to be deprived arbitrarily of the land rights enjoyed, or of the economic benefits deriving from them (Cotula et al., 2006). 1

Resource tenure systems are embedded in societal values, norms and relations, and as such they reflect power structures. They will evolve in response to changes in social, cultural, economic or political structures. When there is an increase in competition over land and natural resources, or growing fear of expropriation, social demand for better boundary security, land transaction processes and rights tends to augment. There have been numerous local responses towards greater tenure security, such as the ‘petits papiers’, which are written contracts prepared in presence of a witness to record sales and leases (Lavigne Delville & Mathieu, 1999; Mathieu, 2001). Often these informal measures provide sufficient security for land users to continue …