Land is a vital resource that sustains livelihoods across Sub-Saharan Africa, but also one that is heavily prone to corruption. Every second citizen in Africa has been affected by land corruption in recent years, according to a study by Transparency International.

Community-driven development is a strategy for empowering people to choose their own priorities, project leaders, and monitoring. Many believe that this model results in lower corruption rates. We look at what happened in the Arid Lands Project in Kenya and a community-development project in Indonesia. These projects had strikingly different corruption rates, even though the countries had similar corruption perception rates at project startup. Find out which design elements may account for the differences in corruption.

Land issues have been rising up the agenda of policy makers due to rapid urbanisation and high food prices. Yet, land administration is one of the most corrupt government activities. How should international donors respond? The first priority is to support domestic governments in improving land administration and anti-corruption processes in general. In addition, donors should undertake explicit analysis of the political economy of land, reduce the impact of their own projects on land administration corruption, help increase transparency and exploit international connections.

This topic guide presents an overview of land corruption in rural and urban areas, focusing on:

The investigative series Indonesia for Sale, co-published by The Gecko Project and Mongabay, exposes the corruption behind Indonesia’s deforestation and land rights crisis.

http://www.thegeckoproject.org

The booklet is part of a series of materials produced in India to raise awareness on the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT) among indigenous peoples and local authorities. In particular, the booklet aims a explaining, through simple cartoons, what communities can do to register their communal lands undert the Forests Rights Act, indicating steps to take and institutions to contact.

13 especialistas y actores vinculados a la gobernanza de la tierra en la región realizaron un breve balance de su país. A partir de esta información, es posible identificar procesos comunes en la región, así como diferencias que alertan de la necesidad de tomar medidas y plantear soluciones particulares para cada realidad.

Humanitarian and development organizations working in conflict-affected settings have a particular responsibility to do no harm and contribute to the wellbeing of the population without bias. The highly complex, politicized realities of work in conflict- and post-conflict settings often require quick, pragmatic and results-oriented decisions, the foundations of which remain frequently implicit. Such decisions might follow an intrinsic logic or situational pragmatism rather than intensive deliberation.

In current literature, certain scholars have stressed the role of the private sector in the process of revitalizing agriculture through agribusiness-led development. Others have underlined the global risks of poorly negotiated land acquisitions that disadvantage farmers and of nontransparent trade arrangements that create suspicion within local communities. Official and unofficial data whose relevance is frequently questioned, because they differ from actual conditions found on the ground, are often built upon these narratives.

The recent global surge in large-scale foreign land acquisitions marks a radical transformation of the global economic and political landscape. Since land that attracts capital often becomes the site of expulsions and displacement, it also leads to new forms of migration. In this paper, I explore this connection from the perspective of a political philosopher. I argue that changes in global land governance unsettle the congruence of political community and bounded territory that we often take for granted.

This paper presents the results of a short-term research project conducted in 2017/2018 on the various ways in which migration and land dynamics in West Africa are intertwined. Contrary to much conventional (policy) thinking in the European Union (EU) today, our point of departure is not that migration is the problem to be solved – nor that (access to) land is the straightforward means to discouraging migration.

Civil war and violence often force large numbers of people to leave their lands. Multiple waves of displacement and (partial) return generate complex overlapping claims that are not easily solved. As people return to their regions of origin—sometimes after decades—they tend to find their land occupied by other settlers, some of whom hold legal entitlements. In the places of arrival, displaced people affect other people’s access as they seek to turn their temporary entitlements into more definite claims.