This paper examines the challenges of institutional, organisational and policy reform around land in Southern Africa. It analyses the land situation in South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, and identifies key issues for further research in each of these countries.
Findings include:

This summary document provides a synthesis of the key issues and discussion points emerging from a four week online conference on the subject of land tenure in drylands.The broad areas of discussion were as follows:Drylands Tenure Policy. What are the contents and essential elements of Drylands Tenure Policies?Strategies for implementing land tenure reform in drylands. What can we learn from drylands experiences?Land policy dialogue and participation.

This paper addresses the amelioration of the impact of AIDS on land tenure and livelihoods. The author argues that, in Lesotho, land policy development should be informed by the status of community support and welfare for those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS. He offers three main policy recommendations as follows: Land administrators should be fully informed about the epidemic and various legislations that govern the rights of the affected households. This will help to ensure uniform implementation of measures to support affected households.

This report recounts the experiences of 130 women from various regions, ethnic groups, religions, and social classes in Kenya who have had their property rights flouted because they are women.The report presents evidence that women are excluded from inheriting, evicted from their lands and homes by in-laws, stripped of their possessions, and forced to engage in risky sexual practices in order to keep their property. When they divorce or separate from their husbands, they are often expelled from their homes with only their clothing.

A survey of the development of pensions in the United States, addressing such issues as what employees want from pensions, what incentives the employer has to create pensions, and what desirable effects industrial pensions have on the economy.Pensions are retirement insurance: They offer protection in case you live long enough to quit collecting a paycheck and can stop working. In the United States, pensions are provided by both public and private sectors.

Examines the role of religion in the formation and assertion of political identity in Kashmir. The issue has been highlighted by the rise of Islamic militancy in the 1990s. Four aspects are examined: the meaning of Islam for the people of Kashmir; the role of Islam in the formation of Kashmiri political identity; the secularization of this political identity; and the implications for the politics of fundamentalism.

Using data from 3,120 farm households surveyed in 2000 and 2006, the paper tests for factors that affect the degree and extent of households’ participation in the rural land rental market. The survey period coincided with the full implementation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) which imposes restriction on the conveyance and transfer (including rental) of all lands awarded under the program.

Paper addresses the following concerns:rural women have limited access to and control of landmost agrarian reforms and legislation that directly or indirectly regulate access to land discriminate against womenthe establishment of legal frameworks with a gender perspective and the elimination of cultural and institutional factors that prevent the recognition of women as producers are essential to safeguard rural women’s access to land.Merely introducing principles of equality into constitutions and in certain norms is not sufficient.

Walter ChambatiApril 2013

Since 1994, the South African government has embarked on an ambitious land reform programme to redistribute and return land to previously disenfranchised communities. However, many black people lack the knowledge, skills and experience needed to manage their land.

Commercial farms in South Africa could become significantly more efficient if they became smaller. The government could encourage that trend by removing policies and distortions that favor large over small farms.Drawing on international evidence, van Zyl, Binswanger, and Thirtle discuss the sources of economies of scale.

Most of the land in sub-Saharan Africa is governed under various forms of customary tenure. Over the past three decades a quiet paradigm shift has been taking place transforming the way such landl is governed. Driven in part by adaptations to changing context but also accelerated by neo-liberal reforms, this shift has created a ‘new’ customary tenure in sub-Saharan Africa.