Since 2010, the Government of Rwanda addressed land tenure through a series of actions including the establishment of institutional and administrative structures for land management and administration. At district, town, and municipality level, District Land Bureaus (DLBs), complemented by sector and cell level land committees, assumed responsibility for land administration and planning. After careful piloting in 2008/09, a process for systematic low cost demarcation and adjudication using aerial photography or high resolution satellite imagery was roll-out nationally.

Recognizing that the impressive gains from comprehensive land tenure regularization may be short-lived if subsequent transactions are not registered, Rwanda has deployed close to 400 Sector Land Managers (SLMs) throughout the country. Regressions using LAIS data highlight that posting of SLMs increased levels of registered sales but not inheritance transactions and that, for agricultural land, having an SLM taken refresher training almost doubled this effect. A survey of all SLMs in April 2016 suggests that they are fully functional and in close contact with DLOs.

In countries where a large proportion of the total land area is held customarily, reform questions around land and development often tend to focus on the customary estate. Evidence from Solomon Islands suggests that a focus on public land holdings, even when they are relatively small in land area, can yield outsized benefits. Publicly owned land regularly includes economically valuable land and urban land on which development pressure is high. In Solomon Islands, as much as 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) may be affected by how effectively urban public land is governed.

This paper provides a brief overview of the intersection of state and customary laws governing land in peri-urban settlements around Honiara, focusing on their impact upon landowners, particularly women landowners. It suggests that the intersection of customary and state legal systems allows a small number of individuals, predominantly men, to solidify their control over customary land. This has occurred to the detriment of many landowners, who have often found themselves excluded from both decision-making processes and the distribution of financial benefits from the use of land.

Land policies are of fundamental importance to sustainable growth, good governance, and the well-being of, and the economic opportunities open to, both rural and urban dwellers - particularly the poor. To this end, research on land policy, and analysis of interventions related to the subject, have long been of interest to the Bank's Research Department, and other academic, and civil society institutions.

The great 21st-century migration into cities will present both a great challenge for humanity and a significant opportunity for global economic growth. This paper describes the diverse patterns that define this metropolitan migration. It then lays out a framework for understanding the costs and benefits of new arrivals through migration's externalities and the challenges and policy tradeoffs that confront city stakeholders.

Housing matters to the livability of cities and to the productivity of their economies. The failure of cities to accommodate the housing needs of growing urban populations can be seen in the proliferation of poorly serviced, high-density informal settlements. Such settlements are not new in the history of rapidly growing cities, their persistence results as much from policies as from economics and demographic transition. Slums have attracted most of the attention on urban housing in developing countries, and the Millennium Development Goals have given prominence to their reduction.

This study aims to achieve a better understanding of the agricultural risk and risk management situation in Tanzania with a view to identifying key solutions to reduce current gross domestic product (GDP) growth volatility. For the purpose of this assessment, risk is defined as the probability that an uncertain event will occur that can potentially produce losses to participants along the supply chain.

AFRA Newsletter No. 64 

AFRA’s work at Ekuthuleni started in 1998. It’s now 2004, six years later, and we have to confess that we have failed. It is not possible to secure tenure at Ekuthuleni, for the purposes for which people want that security, within the current legal, technical and institutional frameworks. A small window of opportunity still exists that might allow us to reverse this judgement.

Na sequência do Segundo Fórum para a Agricultura Familiar e Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional na Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa (FAFSAN II–setembro de 2016), onde a sociedade civil propôs um Pacto Multi-atores para a Governança Sustentável da Terra na Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa (CPLP), tendo recebido adesão por parte dos diferentes atores também presentes na Mesa de Discussão que debateu este tema (nomeadamente, Mecanismos de participação social no CONSAN-CPLP, incluindo, Mecanismo das Universidades e Centros de Investigação, Mecanismo dos Parlamentares e Mecanis

The Latin American and Caribbean Urban CSO Cluster, part of the Global Land Tools Network (GTLN), together with Habitat for Humanity’s Solid Ground Campaign and the Land Portal Foundation, launched an online debate on Urban Land Conflicts in Latin America and the Caribbean in January 2017. Responding to the common interest to make information easy to access and flow to boost collaboration among stakeholders as a critical basis to improve land governance.