This paper examines the experiences of implementation of land reform policies in the Eastern Cape through a series of case studies.It looks at how attempts at redistribution, restitution and land tenure reform have resulted in a variety of models and approaches.

This document contains a collection of critical comments by experts working in the field of pastoralism with regard to several PDN papers.

The injustices of the land issue in South Africa under apartheid are well documented. A programme of land reform since then has had varied success. The authors argue that there is a great deal of empirical evidence to show that the private sector and markets make major contributions to South Africa’s development in general and to land reform in particular. It is in this light that this report looks at the contribution made by the private sector to land reform, both through organised land reform initiatives and in the ordinary course of their business.

This paper is concerned with understanding cattle production in Zimbabwe's Communal Lands, in so-called communal farming systems. Although commercial offtake from Zimbabwe's communal cattle herd is low, communal farmers are productive and rational in their cattle herd management. The economic rationale for cattle ownership is firstly to provide draught power and manure for tillage and secondly to provide milk and meat for local consumption, although the role of livestock in the farming system varies significantly from one part of Zimbabwe to another.

What are the effects of trends away from legal pluralism towards more uniform approaches to the law? This paper analyses the effects of legal changes in property rights for people's welfare and development in India.

The Land Policy in Tanzania is an example of citizens engaging in a protracted struggle for effective participation in the policy process, despite the long exclusion they have experienced in policy making. This paper looks at the evolution of the policy, and the interactions between civil society and the state in its development.The paper concludes that this was the first serious and systematic civic organizations' challenge to the state command model of policy process.

The Praedial Property Registration system has been presented as an alternative system to traditional registries for the formalization of immovable property. Much of the earlier design and pilot work for the Praedial Property Registration system was done by the Peruvian private organization, Instituto Libertad y Democracia (ILD). They claim that in Peru they "have formalized over 150,000 properties much more quickly, and at dramatically less costs, than traditional titling and registration programs" in three-and-a-half years during the early 1990s.

The series of studies discussed in this overview pull together updated information about large-scale land acquisitions in the region, with the aim of identifying trends, common threats, divergences and possible solutions. As well as summarising trends in investment, trade, crop development and land tenure arrangements, the studies focus on the land tenure and human rights challenges.

As decentralisation and tenure reform sweeps through the Sahel, doubts remain whether communities can look after commonly owned land. Is privatisation or state control the best means of preventing the degradation of resources? Can local communities forge institutional mechanisms to regulate competing claims on common resources?

Literature review, focusing on recent and contemporary tenancy structures in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Tenancy for purposes of this review is broadly defined to include different leasing arrangements such sharecropping, labor tenancy, fixed cash rentals, and reverse leasing. Authors have limited our discussion to private leasing of agricultural land, thereby ignoring issues pertaining to leasing of public, forest, and other noncrop lands.

This paper develops a theoretical model of land leasing that includes transaction costs, risk pooling motives and non-tradable productive inputs. It investigates the empirical implications of land contracts using data collected from four villages in Ethiopia.The paper shows that sharecropping is the dominant contract if transaction costs are negligible, but that a rental contract may arise if transaction costs decrease with increasing the tenant’s share of output.

Population growth and urbanisation are driving a livestock revolution. Mixed farming systems are the present and the foreseeable future of West African livestock systems, with concurrent changes in livestock feeding systems and the role of grazing, fodder and penning. The livestock economy has to be seen as part of a national economy in which urban and rural facets interact. Effective policies need to be based on recognition of the capacity of rural people to invest in improving their livelihoods.