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.

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Key findings and policy implications discussed in this document—Promoting Farm Investment for Sustainable Intensification of African Agriculture— include the following: Farmers are much more likely to invest in both productivity and land protection when they can produce cash crops. Livestock husbandry is a boon to farm investments, as it provides cash income, manure, and an insurance policy against crop failures. Land tenure insecurity, political instability, policy caprice, and wildly fluctuating farm prices dissuade investment.

Can land reform have a lasting impact on poverty reduction?

This article discusses the history of land reform in Namibia. The article indicates that at the time of writing (September 1991), it is still too early to comment on the implementation of land reform in Namibia, as it has not yet begun in earnest. Land policy has yet to be detailed and ratified, the institutions for implementing land reform and settlement programmes have to be appointed and in some cases created de novo, and large sums of money have to be found.

Looks at the allocation of land for specific purposes in the integrated land use plans that have come into effect across China since 1998..The paper: presents an analysis of the development of policies on national land use planning since the promulgation of the first Land Law in 1986.

This paper takes a grassroots approach to understand the causes of the variation in food security status among rural farm households Ethiopia.The research is carried out by the Broadening Access and Strengthening Input Market Systems (BASIS) project in Ethiopia which conducted a panel of household surveys since June 2000 in four study districts in South Wollo and Oromia zones of Amhara region.

Secure access to resources is now recognised in human rights discourse as a universal condition of human well-being. This paper aims to contribute to the theoretical and empirical understanding of land tenure as a human rights issue, by analysing recent land tenure policy in South Africa. Specifically, the paper analyses the implementation of the Transformation of Certain Rural Areas Act (Trancraa) in Namaqualand, Northern Cape Province during 2001 and 2002.

Capital is important to agricultural production, so policies that improve access to agricultural capital will facilitate growth, if the capital is used efficiently. In this analysis of capital's role in agricultural production, a new construction of data on capital allowed Mundlak, Larson, and Butzer to advance the cross-country study of production functions. The model reveals the relative importance of capital, a finding quite robust to modifications of the model and the disaggregation of capital to its two components.