News on Land

Tropical Cyclone Gombe has killed at least 53 people since it hit Mozambique a week ago, a sharp rise from earlier estimates.

According to the National Institute of Disaster Management (INGC) on Thursday, another 80 people have been injured and 400,000 affected since the cyclone swept into northern and central areas of the country, flooding towns and destroying houses.

The initial death toll in the southern African country was estimated at seven.

Kinandu village residents in southern Democratic Republic of Congo are taking part in a reforestation initiative in the miombo woodlands while land grabs are simultaneously on the rise.

In Namibia the Affirmative Repositioning Movement’s chief activist, Job Amupanda, has urged members of parliament to do something useful for their people by passing a bill prohibiting foreign nationals from owning land in Namibia.

Amupanda made this plea on Tuesday when he and his delegation met members of the parliamentary standing committee on natural resources at the National Assembly. 

“Who will remember 100 of you (MPs) who have done something significant in dealing with this problem of foreigners owning our land?” Amupanda asked. 

Nigeria has had a series of policies directed towards improving food supply at affordable prices. Policies have kept coming since the 1960s, including the National Accelerated Food Production Programme of 1972 and the most recent – the National Agricultural

To scale back large land grabs in the country, the Minister of Lands, Housing and Urban Development Judith Nabakooba has ordered resident district commissioners (RDCs) to routinely monitor, inspect and report every month land acquired by large land investors to ensure that land they acquire is not occupied by tenants or customary landowners.

She urged RDCs and the district security committees to heed President Yoweri Museveni’s recent directive stopping land evictions across the country.

As the escalating climate crisis threatens access to water for millions across Africa, Drying Out African Lands: Expansion of Large-Scale Agriculture Threatens Access to Water in Africa unveils the devastating impact of large-scale agricultural plantations on the right to water on the continent.

Urban displacements greatly diminish the living conditions of already desperate populations living on the brink of poverty.

On 15 November, Minoo Kyaa, a community activist from Mukuru kwa Njenga, South Nairobi, tweeted,

We keep asking each other “we unaenda wapi?” [Where are you going?] and even tho it isn’t funny we laugh about it and stare at each other in disbelief.

Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland, is a “ticking time bomb”, according to Hlobi Dlamini, a gender and women’s rights advocate from that country. Reflecting on the state of Eswatini in the wake of a June 2021 uprising in pursuit of democracy and human rights, Dlamini said it is only a matter of time before there is another explosion of unrest.  

• For years, people have settled illegally in national parks around Indonesia, clearing the land and farming it in the hope they will eventually be granted legal title to it.
• While the authorities’ default response has been to evict them, a new government program is taking a more collaborative approach that aims to be a win-win for both the parks and the people.
• Under the “conservation partnership” program, the settlers acknowledge that they cannot lay claim to the land and must work to restore damaged ecosystems.
• In turn, they’re

Join leaders and women’s land rights actors from across Africa and the world to celebrate International Women’s Day and our shared vision for accelerating secure women’s land rights as a foundation for achieving gender equality, women’s empowerment, and sustainable development.

Women’s rights to land, housing, property, and natural resources are fundamental human rights – foundational to livelihoods, food, shelter, peace, security, identity, status, and power.

 grouping called Land Justice Consortium has vowed to ensure that land law amendments favor the marginalized, saying there is need to liberate the country from land colonization since most of the arable and prime land is “in the wrong hands”.

The grouping comprises organizations such as Land Governance Alliance (LAGA), Economic Freedom Fighters Movement, Centre for Democracy and Economic Development Initiatives (CDEDI), MOVE, Peoples Federation for National Peace and Development (PEFENAP) and Mzuzu Youth Caucus.