Revised Botswana Land Policy of 2019 now gives married women right to apply for land ownership, says President Masisi

For the first time married women in Botswana will be able to own land, the president of the Southern African country has announced.

“The Revised Botswana Land Policy of 2019 now gives married women the right to apply for land,” President Mokgweetsi Masisi tweeted Thursday, announcing the end of discriminatory treatment under older legislation.

In the six months since the coronavirus began its global spread, more than 15 million people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and more than 600,000 have perished. Governments around the world have instituted lockdowns and shut down businesses. Entire industries have been devastated, notably travel, hospitality, and entertainment in the formal sector, and day labor and street and market vendors in the informal sector. Overall, hundreds of millions of people worldwide have lost their livelihoods.

In this land news update from South Africa we focus on:

• Our changing Covid 19 context
• The unresolved problem of farm worker evictions
• Budget cuts and food insecurity
• Contestation over land administration in communal areas in KwaZulu-Natal province
• The need for a digital deeds registry platform
• Unresolved land restitution disputes
• The  complex backstory behind mounting land occupations in Cape Town
• A selection of land related news from Southern Central and Eastern Africa 

The second round of LAND-at-scale resulted in 24 ideas submitted by 19 Dutch embassies. The LAND-at-scale Committee selected 6 most promising ideas to develop further. 

LAND-at-scale is a government programme that contributes to improving land governance. The programme supports economic development, peace and stability in developing countries. It also contributes to sustainable incomes, social justice, and better food and nutrition security.

An Indonesian man is seeking someone to buy his plot of land and marry his sister-in-law, in what has become another viral real estate ad in the country to be bundled with a marriage deal.

In the ad, which was posted on Facebook on Tuesday, the land owner, Aris Sofiyanto, wrote the following:

‘WOLTS Team Perspectives’ is a new series of blogs launched in February 2020 by the global WOLTS team. In this series, field team members share their views about the impacts of the project’s action-research on gender, land and mining among pastoralist communities in Tanzania and Mongolia.

From forced displacement to conflict over resources, the coronavirus pandemic has created a “perfect storm” for land rights abuses - and the situation is likely to worsen, researchers and activists warned on Thursday.

The migration of men to rural areas due to lockdowns and job losses has increased competition over land, with a disproportionate impact on woman, said organisers of a land rights webinar.

The Land Portal Foundation’s Sierra Leone Country Portfolio provides a comprehensive understanding of the gaps and pitfalls in the country’s land investments scheme. ​

Sierra Leone is the first of a series of countries to get a new portfolio on the Land Portal. This knowledge piece summarizes the history and development of the country’s land governance system and analyses key elements of this system, such as the land legislation, trends in land use and land acquisition, how women access land rights and more.

The LAND-at-scale programme got a great response to the second call for ideas. The programme received 25 new ideas from 19 different countries. Support continues for enhancing land governance and tenure security. This is evident in the response and effort from embassies, NGOs and knowledge institutes.

Current LAND-at-scale portfolio status

In October 2019, approval was given to 13 promising ideas. LAND-at-scale has been working closely with embassies, knowledge institutes and NGOs to transform these ideas into land governance projects.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (April 2nd, 2020)—The first round of Cadasta Foundation’s Data Accelerator Grant has been released to three African organizations to advance land rights and tenure security for vulnerable populations.