The Effectiveness of Institutions for Resolving Land Use Conflicts between Farmers and Pastoralists in Morogoro Region

Various institutions for resolving conflicts over land use are growing in Africa. This research explores the effectiveness of the Tanzania’s locally established institutions for resolving land use conflicts between farmers and pastoralists using Kilosa and Mvomero districts of Morogoro region as the cases. The study adopted a descriptive, case research design from a sample of 120 study participants. The study revealed that the local institutions for resolving land use conflicts are less effective to reduce the recurring upheavals between farmers and pastoralists. Several reasons ranging from the conceptual aspects of land use conflict, methodological use in dealing with the land use conflicts, as well as institutional set ups accounts for this. Because of this, the study concludes that the uses of local institutions for resolving land disputes have not contributed significantly on mitigating the problem. Among the failure of those institutions include ignoring traditional, religious and famous people where local conflict occurs who understand nature and dynamics of those conflicts. Institutional practices were also constrained by lack financial and human resources, too much use of coercive force; as well as the failure to outweigh the legitimacy versus legality in bridging gaps over land use conflicts. The study recommends several issues.