ACES is a three-year (2014 -2017) research project that is being implemented in Mozambique with the main purpose being to contribute to poverty alleviation in Mozambique by co-producing new knowledge of the dynamic links between land use change, Ecosystem Services (ES) and the wellbeing of the rural poor and thereby meet the demand from policy makers and practitioners for ways to better manage Mozambique’s woodlands (Dewees et al. 2008; Wiggins et al. 2012).

As organizations working on food security, natural resources management and poverty eradication, we strongly encourage governments to keep the profile of land and natural resources high in the post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda document to be endorsed in September 2015. Secure and equitable land rights are an essential element of an Agenda that has the ambition to be people-centred and planet-sensitive.

This book is a challenge to those who see the drylands as naturally vulnerable to food insecurity and poverty. 

It argues that improving agricultural productivity in dryland environments is possible by working with climatic uncertainty rather than seeking to control it – a view that runs contrary to decade of development practice in arid and semi-arid lands.

Across China, Kenya and India – and most other dryland countries – family farmers and herders relate to the inherent variability of the drylands as a resource to be valued, rather than a problem to be avoided. 

Over the last decade, the Government of Rwanda (GoR) has introduced several land reforms through formulation and enactment of enabling legal framework, establishment of land administration institutions and implementation of national land tenure regularization. Further, the Land Act of 2013 stipulated that all landholders must formally register their land. To support registration compliance, the GoR decentralized the Land Administration System (LAS) to all District Land Bureaus (DLBs).

This paper analyses the resettlement process and procedures followed during the displacement of communities from Kipawa and Kigilagila settlements to pave way for the expansion of the Dar es Salaam International Airport in Dar es Salaam city. The paper is based on findings of a PhD research project carried out between 2010 and 2013 that explored procedures and process which caused displacement of the receiving community while resettling the displaced residents from Kipawa and Kigilagila.

This paper analyses the resettlement process and procedures followed during the displacement of communities from Kipawa and Kigilagila settlements to pave way for the expansion of the Dar es Salaam International Airport in Dar es Salaam city. The paper is based on findings of a PhD research project carried out between 2010 and 2013 that explored procedures and process which caused displacement of the receiving community while resettling the displaced residents from Kipawa and Kigilagila.

This paper examines regulatory approaches for informal livelihood activities within cities. Informality is generally conceptualised in terms of activities, workers and governance. Scholars have concentrated much advocating development of micro enterprise and improvement of capital goods. Little focus has been put on the conceptualisation of regulatory approaches for informal livelihood activities spatially, which sought to be the aim of this paper.

 Peri-urban areas in Ethiopia like that of other African countries are places where much of urban growth is taking place and as a result the competition for land between agriculture and nonagriculture (urban built-up property) is intense. It is there that new properties and property rights emerge and at the same time the existing traditional or customary rights may also disappear or dissolve. This study has attempted to assess and demonstrate the process of built-up property formation process in the transitional peri-urban areas of Ethiopia.

In various countries around the world, land expropriation is considered as a major tool used by governments to assemble tracts of land for various activities aiming at public interest. However, determination of compensation which is regarded as a pre-requisite for land expropriation has been a source of controversy in this process. This paper attempts to find out how land valuation for compensation during expropriation is carried out in Rwanda, considering two expropriation projects in Kigali city.

Large scale land acquisition is a buzzword of the day in the world, more so in Ethiopia. The issue is indeed polarizing, in one hand it is dubbed as land grab and seen as ultimate scramble for land. On the other hand, it is often depicted as key to development, technology transfer and boost in productivity of an otherwise idle land available in Ethiopian lowlands, or somewhere else.

Under Mozambique’s Constitution and Land Law (1997), communities may legally govern their lands and natural resources according to customary norms and practices, so long as local customs do not contradict national law. However, rising land scarcity and associated increases in land value are leading some families to “reinterpret” custom as sanctioning the dispossession of widows from their marital lands.

Achieving sustainable food security (i.e., the basic right of people to produce and/or purchase the food they need, without harming the social and biophysical environment) is a major challenge in a world of rapid human population growth, large-scale changes in economic development and in the face of climate change.

In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), production on smallholder farms is critical to the food security of the rural poor and contributes the majority of food production at the national level.