This polygon shapefile shows the boundaries of customary lands in the Southern Province of Zambia for 1985-2014. Customary land is land which is owned by indigenous communities and administered in accordance with their customs, as opposed to statutory tenure usually introduced during the colonial periods. Common ownership is one form of customary land ownership. These data were digitized from 1:50,000 scale topographic maps and Earthsat imagery. This layer is part of a collection of GIS data relating to Zambia including boundary files, rivers, roads, schools, utilities, protected areas and vegetation.This layer is intended for researchers, students, and policy makers for reference and mapping purposes, and may be used for basic applications such as viewing, querying, and map output production, or to provide a basemap to support graphical overlays and analysis with other spatial data.