The past decade has witnessed major
shift thinking about water, including how water
infrastructure development strategies can help advance
sustainable development and the global fight against
poverty. This reflects, in part, greater attention now being
paid to governance reforms promoting integrated water
resource management (IWRM), the efficient and wise use of
water, and expanding access to water and energy services. In

Employing a view of culture as a
communicative phenomenon involving discursive engagement,
which is deeply influenced by social and economic
inequalities, the authors argue that the struggle to break
free of poverty is as much a cultural process as it is
political and economic. In this paper, they analyze
important examples of discursive spaces - public meetings in
Indian village democracies (gram sabhas), where villagers

Son preference is known to be found in
certain types of cultures, that is patrilineal cultures. But
what explains the fact that China, South Korea, and
Northwest India manifest such extreme child sex ratios
compared with other patrilineal societies? This paper argues
that what makes these societies unique is that their
pre-modern political and administrative systems used
patrilineages to organize and administer their citizens. The

Driven by population growth,
urbanization, and increased income, the demand for
animal-source food products in developing countries is
rapidly increasing. Livestock, which already constitutes 30
percent of the agricultural Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in
the developing world, and about 40 percent of the global
agricultural GDP, is one of the fastest-growing subsectors
in agriculture. Growing demand presents real opportunities

Significant progress has been made over the past decade or so in the development of policy and legislation that support the recognition of customary rights to land, with important legal rulings in Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique, South Sudan, and South Africa. At the same time, the strengthening of communities’ traditional rights to use resources has progressed through community forest reserves and community conservation areas.

Investment in land is not conflict-neutral, and given the history of violent conflict and mutual destabilization in the Horn of Africa there is potential for localized political grievances to turn into wider regional conflict. There is significant foreign investment in land in Ethiopia by parties from Africa and further afield. This is primarily geared towards producing for the export market, and is often concentrated in regions with limited political influence.

Investment in land is not conflict-neutral, and given the history of violent conflict and mutual destabilization in the Horn of Africa there is potential for localized political grievances to turn into wider regional conflict. There is significant foreign investment in land in Ethiopia by parties from Africa and further afield. This is primarily geared towards producing for the export market, and is often concentrated in regions with limited political influence.

The main objective of this paper is to provide a) a presentation of the diversity of land related conflicts in Africa, b) an analysis of underlying causes of conflicts and experiences in conflict resolution and, c) lessons learnt and best practices from the policy and legal responses and links with enhancement of land governance in the region.

News, views and experiences on securing rights to rangelands from East Africa and beyond.

This document summarizes a legal and policy review of the Community Land Bill (Oct. 2011 draft), the Land Bill (5 Dec. 2011 draft), and the Land Registration Bill (12 Dec. 2011 draft) with respect to the recognition of community land rights. This review was commissioned by the USAID Kenya SECURE Project upon request of the Ministry of Lands and Land Reform Transformation Unit.

The LAPSSET Corridor project, a major infrastructure development project that will run from Kenya to South Sudan and Ethiopia, will impact, positively or negatively, on the lives of more than 100 million people in the three countries. Indigenous peoples will potentially suffer the most negative impacts as a result of their having been historically marginalized economically, socially and politically. The recent discovery of oil in Turkana will add to the suffering of the Turkana peoples.

The Sustainable Rangeland Management Project (SRMP) aims at securing land and resource
rights of pastoralists, agro-pastoralists and crop farmers, while improving land management
by supporting village and district land use planning and rangeland management in Kiteto,
Bahi, Chamwino and Kondoa Districts in Tanzania. More broadly, it aims at influencing policy