A narrative on rural youth in Africa has continued to evolve in policy circles around the world. Much of it is driven by population statistics that point to an imminent youth bulge in Africa and concerns about a poor economic outlook (stagnation) for African productivity and growth. Fears of massive unemployment, social unrest and undesirable migration due to limited economic growth drive the bulk of the discourse. This is juxtaposed with the promise of a youth dividend for the continent, which is highlighted by some quarters of the policy debate.

This paper examines the intersections between youth access to land, migration decisions and employment opportunities using nationally representative and multi-year data from multiple African countries. We document evidence on the evolving dynamics in land distribution and ownership patterns, the effect of land access on youth livelihood choices and development of rental and sales market in the region.

Rwanda has undertaken a land registration and titling program since 2008 with a registration of 10.3 million land parcels in 2013. The aim of this paper is to investigate the early effects of the program on tenure security and agricultural investments since few studies have been carried out in this research area. The study was undertaken in Musanze district in Northern Rwanda, with specific focus on Gataraga sector and it draws on a mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods. The findings indicate that the program led to reduced land conflicts and improved tenure security.

The main aims of this study are to highlight the differences and the similarities between the European model of agricultural and rural development, and the state of play in the Romanian agricultural sector. Statistically speaking, the agricultural sector's indicators of the past two decades place Romania outside the family picture of the EU countries, with very slight resemblances, and very strong discrepancies between their economic, technical, and institutional characteristics.

We analyze the impact of land fragmentation on production diversification in rural Albania. Albania represents a particularly interesting case for studying land fragmentation as the fragmentation is a direct outcome of land reforms. The results indicate that land fragmentation is an important driver of production diversification of farm households in Albania. We find that land fragmentation stimulates significantly more diversification for subsistence farm households than for market-oriented households.

The restoration and improvement of natural capital (NC) in rural areas represents one of the main objectives of the EU’s rural development policy (RDP). In addition to creating environmental and biodiversity benefits, NC represents an important territorial asset and a basis to generate socio-economic second-order effects for economic competitiveness and rural viability. However, the regional capability to valorise NC depends on the specific regional context, needs and potentials, as well as targeted policy support.

Different forms of income diversification represent important strategies of farmers to either cope with the changing economic framework conditions or to valorise given territorial potentialities. Nevertheless, the decision to diversify economic activities on or off the farm will heavily depend on the agricultural business and household characteristics. Our study used a survey of 2154 farms from eleven European regions to identify distinct farm types in order to investigate differences regarding the willingness to diversify in the future.

Land tenure security is widely considered to be a fundamental factor in motivating farmers to adopt sustainable land management practices. This study aims to establish whether it is true that owner-operators adopt more effective soil conservation measures than tenant-operators, and whether well-designed agro-environmental instruments can provide sufficiently strong motivation to compensate for the differences between these two groups.

80% of Cambodian people are farmers living in rural and remote areas. They are depending on agriculture, livestock and natural resource extraction to feed their families. Nearly last two decades, the royal government of Cambodia has tried its effort develop legal framework, infrastructure and urbanization to attract national and foreign investments to invest in Cambodia. while legal enforcement has been weak, some development plan has exploited and caused negative impacts on Cambodia people who are majority poor.

A comunidade Uruçu está situada na zona rural do município de Mairi, Bahia-Brasil, próximo ao Rio Jacuípe, clima semiárido, subtropical e ameno. A precipitação pluviométrica média anual varia entre 600 a 800 milímetros, coordenadas geográfica -11.642196 -40.263096.

March 2014 – In most of Africa, land is at the heart of economic, social and political life. Therefore, land and natural resource rights and governance issues profoundly affect and are affected by development initiatives across the continent. To fully succeed and contribute to ending extreme poverty in the post-2015 world, development initiatives must recognize and strengthen the land and natural resource rights of local people, especially the rural poor and women. However, while there is growing awareness of these issues, they are often overlooked.