Topics and Regions
Rick has over 40 years experience working in the land sector in Southern Africa. He is part of the Land Portal knowledge engagement team working to research and develop knowledge resources including data stories, blogs and in-depth country profiles for Southern, Central and Eastern Africa.
Rick is also a Senior Research Associate with Phuhlisani NPC - a South African land sector NGO and the curator of specialist Southern African land news and analysis website https://knowledgebase.land
He tweets on land related issues Twitter account https://twitter.com/KnowledgebaseL
He has a PhD from the University of Cape Town. His research in Langa, Cape Town features as the central case study in a recent book Urban Planning in the Global South (2018), co-authored with the late Vanessa Watson, which examines the on-going contestations over land and housing in the rapidly growing cities of the global South.
Details
Location
Detailed timeline: Zimbabwe
This detailed timeline provides further background information on the history and land governance of Zimbabwe summarised in the Land Portal country profile.
Detailed timeline: Botswana
This detailed timeline provides further background information on the history and land governance of Botswana presented in the Land Portal Botswana country profile
Madagascar: Detailed timeline
This detailed timeline has been prepared as a companion to the new Magascar country narrative to be published on the Land Portal. It provides a chronology of key events in Madagascar's history, its political transitions and changing land policy and law.
Towards a holistic land law evaluation in sub-Saharan Africa:
Land laws provide a legal basis for addressing a country’s land-related strategies and are the central land policy instruments through which governments realise land policy objectives. Considering their vital role, it is imperative that land laws be evaluated to ensure that policy objectives are followed and that the laws are not ineffective or counterproductive. The extant literature, however, provides only a fragmentary basis for evaluation.
The 2015-19 multi year drought in the Eastern Cape, South Africa: it's evolution and impacts on agriculture
The Eastern Cape Province, and in particular, it's interior western Karoo region, has long been subject to periodic droughts, with significant implications for it's agricultural sector. From 2015, with some recovery in 2020, the area experienced a severe multi year drought, with negative impacts for a range of sectors, including extensive livestock farming. At the time of the drought, a common narrative in the media stated that the drought was unprecedented. In this paper, we analyze how the drought evolved climatically, as well as its impacts on vegetation and farming conditions.
How does climate exacerbate root causes of conflict in Zimbabwe?
Pathway #1: Food insecurity and competition over access and use of natural resources
(I) The effects of the climate crisis can impact food, land, and water systems in various ways, reducing their production and productivity, increasing food insecurity and potentially lead to conflict because of the reduced opportunity costs of participating in violent acts.
A framework to scale citizen participation in urban development
This working paper summarises our understanding of a framework to support the scaling of participatory development in low-income urban neighbourhoods in the global South. The discussion addresses constraints that have previously been identified both in the academic literature and through social movements and support agencies seeking citizen inclusion. Our study demonstrates the importance of working with all key stakeholders, including organised communities, urban social movements, academics, professionals and City authorities.
Uneven development, politics and governance in urban Africa
This paper considers the foundations of contemporary African urban economies and how these intersect with the evolution of urban politics, carving a route through a wide range of existing literatures relevant to the politics and political economy of African urban development. It considers the economic and demographic drivers of urbanisation in Africa and their consequences for urban restructuring and uneven development, before turning to the forms of urban politics that have emerged alongside, responded to and also helped shape these urban economic developments.
Land expropriation in Palma, Mozambique
In a context of conflict affecting northern Cabo Delgado, the government approved the request for allocation of 12,000 hectares of land located in Palma in favour of the Cabo Delgado Economic Development Promotion Centre (CPD), an unknown public entity created in May 2021 and whose attributions and competences are confused with the mandate of the Integrated Development Agency of the North (ADIN). The approval of the provisional DUAT in favour of the CPD was not preceded by a public consultation with affected communities, as required by land legislation.
South Africa’s Land Resource in the Water Energy Food (WEF) Nexus Context
Agricultural activities are directly dependent on the availability and quality of natural resources, particularly land and water. While the availability of land has featured strongly in South Africa’s growth and transformation policy agendas, this piece focusses on presenting a more detailed view of the quantity and quality of South Africa’s land resource, and how this impacts the agricultural use and viability of land resources in sustaining South Africa growth objectives.