Francesca di Matteo

Francesca Di Matteo is a researcher and deputy director at the French Institute for Research in Africa (IFRA-Nairobi). She holds a PhD in Political Anthropology. Her thesis traced and reconstructed the land reform agenda in Kenya from the 1990s to 2016. Particular attention was paid to land tenure reforms and actors’ negotiations revolving around customary land regimes or community land. She continues her research on community land in Kenya by questioning how land reforms did (or did not) impact communities’ claims on ancestral land and their redress by the Kenyan government; how far the promulgated law on community land does (or does not) reflect socio-economic realities of Kenyan rural areas; what are the local national and international stakes and implications of the legal recognition of customary land rights.