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PLAAS was founded in 1995 as a specialist unit in the School of Government, Economic and Management Sciences Faculty at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), Cape Town. Since then, PLAAS has developed a proven track record of undertaking high-quality research on land and agrarian reform, poverty, and natural resource management in South Africa and the southern African region.
Besides research and postgraduate teaching, PLAAS undertakes training, provides advisory, facilitation and evaluation services and is active in the field of national policy development. Through these activities, and by seeking to apply the tools of critical scholarship to questions of policy and practice, we seek to develop new knowledge and fresh approaches to the transformation of society in southern Africa.
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Resources
Displaying 16 - 20 of 54Making agricultural investment work for Africa: Parliamentarians from Central Africa respond to the ‘land rush’
How should African politicians respond to the ‘land rush’? Parliamentarians from the member states of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) met in mid-November to debate this question. Includes a collective response to agriculture and food security is needed, what land deals are underway in Central Africa?; investment and production, but for which markets?; impacts of land deals on Africa farmers; can Africa help secure the world’s food supply?; transparency isa precondition for inclusive investments; what should be done?
The disjunctures of land and agrarian reform in South Africa. Implications for the agri-food system
Includes agri-food regimes and corporate concentration in the agri-food system in South Africa; three broad phases of land reform, 1994-99, 1999-2007, 2007 to the present; two competing views of small-scale agriculture, land reform and small-scale agricultural production, smallholder farmer support.
The ‘African farmer’ … is a woman
A report on the Pan African Land Hearing held in Johannesburg on 15 August. Representatives of rural communities affected by land grabs in 9 African countries (Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe) presented testimony to a panel of experts, including the Pan African Parliament, showing how the theme of gender permeated every case.
A scan of rural civil society in South Africa
This research report examines the changing role and function of civil society in South Africa pre and post-1994, and its changing relations with the state through successive presidencies. It presents a four quadrant typology of civil society organisations
Pressures on land in sub-Saharan Africa: social differentiation and social responses
Includes key issues in land and development patterns; land tenure in Africa: theory and practice; debates about ‘land grabbing’ in sub-Saharan Africa; outcomes of and responses to ‘land grabbing’; ways to mitigate conflict, social and political unrest.