The village land act's regulation of foreign land grabs in Tanzania

The purpose of this major research paper is to examine how Tanzania's Village Land Act interacts with the current wave of large-scale land acquisitions in rural Tanzania. The paper assesses the Village Land Act in the context of how it protects local land users' land rights with respect to foreign land investments. Moreover, the paper frames the current wave of land grabs in the larger context of land reform in post-independence Sub-Saharan Africa and within the larger context of the current land grabbing phenomenon. The goal is to understand how the Village Land Act may protect local communities from risks associated with large-scale land investments including land dispossession, inadequate compensation for lost access to land, and poor consultation with local communities prior to the approval of land grab deals. I conclude that the Village Land Act, if it were adequately implemented, provides some level of protection to local communities through mandatory consultation and compensation with respect to foreign land investments. However, the ultimate decision to allow large-scale investments in land to go forward remains in the hands of the President, which reduces the ability of impacted communities to negotiate and retain their land access.