Chapter Two
Land Scarcity, Distribution and
Conflict in Rwanda
Jean Bigagoza, Carolyne Abong and Cede Mukarubugo
Introduction
Rwanda is a small country of eight million people in central Africa, with a
long history of violent conflict dating back to 1959, and culminating in the
1994 genocide. Conflict in Rwanda has created a large refugee population in
neighbouring countries, with Uganda and Tanzania being the largest refugee
recipients before the 1994 genocide, and the Democratic Republic of Congo
(DRC) receiving the largest number of refugees after the genocide. As this
study will show, the Rwanda refugee population has had a destabilising
effect on the entire Great Lakes region, including on Rwanda itself.
This chapter examines the relationship between land scarcity and conflict
in Rwanda. Historically, land pressure has been a severe problem in Rwanda,
where over 90% of the population practises agriculture. Land pressure has
resulted in declining overall agricultural production, but increasing produc-
tion for individuals and groups with favourable land and resource access.
Cultivation is encroaching into wetlands, national parks and forest reserve
areas to satisfy unmet demands for land by some, predominately underpriv-
ileged, groups. Large numbers of internally displaced persons have worsened
stress in some ecologically sensitive areas, such as in forests, resulting in
iocalised degradation of forest resources.
We will assess the power dynamics in Rwanda insofar as power through
control of the state is essential to con~ol land. We will demonstrate that elite
power struggles for control of the state links land and conflict in Rwanda
where, historically, conuol of the state is the principal factor in rights to access.
use and ownership of land. While many analyses focus on linkages behveen
conflict and ethnicity, less attention has been focused on the role of land scarci-
ty in the Rwanda conflict. A thoughtful analysis of the so-called ethnic conflict
in Rwanda will show ethnicity is a cover for competition to control scarce land.
Indeed, this study argues that the causes of conflicts in Rwanda lie in compe
tition to access and control scarce land.' We do not imply that land scarcity is
the ultimate or most important root cause of the Rwandan conflict. It is, how-
ever, a critical component of the complex and intertwined causal factors.
Since 1980 powerful economic, political and social grievances in Rwanda