Abstract

This paper examines the theoretical bases underlying the causes of land conflicts. It involves a critical analysis of various contentions surrounding land nexus violent conflicts with particular attention to farmer-pastoralist conflicts. The drive for this examination is more on a comparison of causes between such conflicts in varying contexts of African. The major aim is to broaden the understanding about the nature of these conflicts with the prospect of setting grounds for scholars and policy makers for reviewing and crafting relevant intervening measures. The paper draws on debates and literature on farmer-pastoralist conflict to develop insights into their dynamics. This aims at making stakeholders informed of the existing gaps in research and underlying causes that could be capitalized on in devising relevant mitigating measures. The review shows that the uncontrolled interaction of the supply; demand and structural induced aspects contribute to the state of inequality, competition, and conflicts among land users. This situation is found to be aggravated by the   social and political conditions surrounding the causes and governance of natural resources, with typical scenario of the changing policies of land tenure that have exacerbated increasing land grabbing and tenure insecurities.  The paper recommends the need for revisiting the formal and informal structures that governs resource distribution in a bid to alleviate existing land- access inequalities and conflicts.

Key words: Conflicts, farmers, pastoralists, resource conflicts, competition, environmental scarcity, structural scarcity, resource degradation.