Investigates the processes and impact of commercialisation of land in Malawi – specifically the acquisition of huge tracts of communal lands by foreign companies and local elites for sugarcane production in Nkhotakota and Chikwawa districts. The main finding was that ‘land grabbing’ for large-scale commercial agriculture in these two districts negatively affected the livelihoods of the poor communal farmers. The costs to the affected communities outweighed the benefits

Malawi, like other countries in Africa, has a new land policy designed to clarify and formalise customary tenure. The country is poor with a high population density, highly dependent on agriculture, and the research sites are matrilineal-matrilocal, and near urban centres. But the case raises issues relevant to land tenure reform elsewhere: the role of ‘traditional authorities’ or chiefs vis-a-vis the state and ‘community’; variability in types of ‘customary’ tenure; and deepening inequality within rural populations.

A 78-page list, much of it pretty grim reading. Divided into reports and press cuttings, in alphabetical order. The reports section comprises a ‘1stXI’ of Future Agricultures Consortium, GRAIN, IIED, IISD, Mokoro, Oakland Institute, Oxfam, Pambazuka News, PLAAS, RRI and TNI, followed by a further 36 from Action Aid to the World Resources Institute. The press cuttings cover Global, Africa, 31 African countries or regions from Angola to Zimbabwe, followed by Middle East, Asia and China. Countries with greatest coverage are Ethiopia, Liberia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania.

A guide to a report from the World Bank’s Agriculture and Rural Development Department which is likely to prove extremely helpful to practitioners. The structure of the report is first given in detail to illustrate its coverage. This is followed by a section which gathers together some of its contents and conclusions, interspersed with comments.

Reflections following the passing of the African Union’s Guiding Principles on Large-Scale Land-Based Investment, the culmination of policy processes over the past decade. Rising food prices reflect the systematic neglect of agriculture over a long period. We need indicators and monitoring, cannot rely on technology to resolve political problems, need a system-wide approach and to create opportunities for young people to build livelihoods in farming and throughout the agro-food system.

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?

Argues the need for landowners in South Africa to draw lessons from events in Zimbabwe and to be much more radical, proactive and imaginative in promoting needed changes in land reform, failing which they will have no future, as pressures from the landless intensify. The current status quo is unsustainable and the national effort inadequate. The private sector has a key role to play to break the current logjam. Increasing number of landowners are beginning to see the light and accept political realities. Calls for a land summit to negotiate a comprehensive agrarian transformation.

Contains mix-and-match ministries, separating Land Reform from Agriculture, dualism and the ‘missing middle’, rethinking rural development, what are the policy alternatives?

Analyses the shifting role of South African farmers, agribusiness and capital elsewhere in Southern Africa and the rest of the continent. Explores recent expansion trends, investigates the interests and agendas shaping such deals, and the legitimating ideologies and discourses employed in favour of them. Now it is being more centrally organised and coordinated than in the past, is more frequently taking the form of large concessions for newly formed consortia and agribusinesses, and is increasingly reliant on external financing through transnational partnerships.

Covers land rights and economics in 13 communal conservancies in Caprivi and the Namibian state in rural Caprivi – ministries of lands, agriculture, the environment, and the police. Comments on the lack of legal capacity in rural Namibia.

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.

Includes land regulatory framework; foreign direct investment and large-scale land acquisition; mechanized farming agriculture; lack of transparency and corruption in land use and allocation; land and conflict. Argues that land tenure insecurity has resulted from the imposition of formal law that does not recognize individual rights to unregistered land. State authorities have considered unregistered land to be state land and thus available to transfer to private commercial interests, the military, land speculators, and elites without regard for customary rights.