Through the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, in 2013 G8 countries are seeking to mobilise the private sector and multi-national corporations to boost African agriculture. This new Future Agricultures / PLAAS briefing (pdf) looks at how African countries are engaging with the New Alliance. The authors argue that large-scale acquisitions of land for corporate agriculture, which may result from New Alliance projects, pose a serious challenge for local markets and smallholder farmers.

Series of papers on land tenure issues including: Piloting local administration of records in Ekuthuleni, KwaZulu-Natal, by Donna Hornby (AFRA, South Africa)Ivory Coast’s Plan Foncier Rural: lessons from a pilot project to register customary rights, by Camilla Toulmin (IIED) Customary land identification and recording in Mozambique, by Chris Tanner Supporting local rights: will the centre let go?

This collection of briefing papers summarises select papers presented at the workshop: "Land Rights for African Development: From Knowledge to Action" held in November 2005.

By Samuel Gebreselassie

This paper argues that socio-economic dominance based on ethnic and race factors is a long standing phenomena in Africa, which was instigated by colonial rule and perpetuated by elite interests in capital accumulation and political power during the post-colonial era. The report looks at experiences from a range of countries, including Zimbabwe, South Africa, Rwanda and the Congo.It finds that ethnic dominance-building strategies have tended to focus on the control of access to limited resources.

Poverty and income inequality persist in South Africa despite efforts to eliminate them. Poverty is more pervasive in rural areas, particularly in the former homelands: the majority (65 percent) of the poor are found in rural areas and 78 percent of those likely to be chronically poor are also in rural areas.

This paper examines the introduction of Restitution Act No 22 of 1994. The main aim of the Act was to provide for the restitution of land rights to persons or communities dispossessed after 19 June 1913 as a result of past racial discriminatory laws or practices.

This report sets out the results and key insights from recent research on land policy and analysis of specific interventions relating to land. The aim is to highlight the importance of nuanced policy advice, but also to illustrate some general principles for formulating such policy advice in specific country settings.Conclusions and recommendations include:providing secure tenure to land is needed to improve the welfare of the poor, in particular, by enhancing the asset base of those, such as women, whose land rights are often neglected.

[This document is hosted by Resource Africa]

This paper is a synthesis of land issues and land policy constraints in Southern Africa prepared for the World Bank Regional Workshop on Land Issues in Africa and the Middle East held in Kampala, Uganda, in May 2002. It synthesizes key points made in commissioned papers, plenary comments, and facilitated discussions from a special Southern Africa Working Group attended by conference delegates.

This paper describes and analyses people’s security of access to means of production among the Karimojong herd-owners who inhabit the North-Eastern districts of Uganda. It claims that Ugandan statutory land management policy and law undermines the customary tenure system, thereby threatening access security for Karimojong agro-pastoralists.