Engaging with human-to-land relationships for engaged science: A complex-systems view for African land studies

Given the extractive nature of many Western-led scientific activities in Africa, it is important to design research programmes that have long-term investments for (and on) the continent.These programmes must engage communities from local to regional levels to be sustainable, especially if they aim to achieve the sustainability of life systems continentally.In this regard, I propose and illustrate the value of using systemic approaches that focus primarily on the historicity and evolutionary nature of human-to-land relationships, which stem from shared identities, values, etc., to conduct engaged socio-economic-land studies as a subset of social-ecological systems.