Smallholders’ Land Access in Sub-Saharan Africa | Land Portal

Resource information

Date of publication: 
October 2016
Resource Language: 
ISBN / Resource ID: 
handle:10986/25368
Copyright details: 
World Bank

While scholars long recognized the importance of land markets as a key driver of rural non-farm development and transformation in rural areas, evidence on the extent of their operation and the nature of participants remains limited. We use household data from 6 countries to show that there is great potential for such markets to increase productivity and equalize factor ratios. While rental markets transfer land to land-poor and labor-rich producers, their operation and thus impact may be constrained by policy restrictions. Their functioning may also be constrained by ill-defined or insecure rights that may arise from failure to fully compensate existing rights in cases of expropriation, a failure to implement more broadly land policies or to do so in a gender sensitive manner. Methodological and substantive conclusions are derived.

Authors and Publishers

Author(s), editor(s), contributor(s): 

Deininger, Klaus
Savastano, Sara
Xia, Fang

Publisher(s): 

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