The author formerly worked for the regional organisation ZERO. This regional survey covers a number of sustainable development issues and future challenges for Southern Africa.

Looks at seven key principles for tenure design drawing on the international literature and at multiple routes to land tenure security. Argues that Zimbabwe needs to get over the idea that freehold title is the solution to all ills.

Includes a long history of land-related injustice; land and conflict in the colonial period: Mau Mau and land; land policies at independence; migration and settlement within Kenya; recent political violence and contested claims to land; conclusion.

Includes the dimension of poverty and the need for land; colonisation and decolonisation; the imposition of globalization; indispensable but sufficient; constructing/ building the institutional framework in Mozambique. Cites the key issues cited by Mozambican civil society – no to landless people in Mozambique; no to absentee landowners, those who let the land and do not invest; recognition of testimonial proof of land occupation by the poor; incorporation of common law systems into the legal framework; and stop the bi-modal approach for agricultural development.

One of the new government’s major policy priorities has to be to get agriculture moving as a motor of growth. The long-running issue of outstanding compensation payments has meant that international donors and financiers have not engaged with land reform areas, missing out on supporting major development opportunities. People on the resettlement farms are producing significant quantities of food and other agricultural products. Recent figures make it clear how vital they are to Zimbabwe’s struggling economy. So quick resolution of the compensation issue is essential.

Land tax has long been neglected in West Africa and is regarded as a taboo subject. Yet contrary to received wisdom it is possible to introduce a basic annual land tax without a land register or a computerized system. While certain precautions need to be taken, it not only generates revenue for the locality but also discourages the unproductive retention of unused land, and in the long term helps secure the land rights of producers or residents by proving written proof of their occupancy.

Zimbabwe today has an agrarian structure made up of small, medium and large farms, all under different forms of land ownership. A landscape once dominated by 4,500 large-scale commercial farmers is now populated by about 145,000 smallholder households, occupying 4.1 million hectares, and around 23,000 medium-scale farmers on 3.5 million hectares. Knowing exactly who has land and where is difficult. Illegal multiple allocations combine with unclear boundary demarcations and an incomplete recording system.

Section I provides an overview of large-scale land deals. It assesses the trend at a global level and examines structural obstacles faced by efforts to regulate such deals. Section II focuses on corruption as a major obstacle to improving the protection of local communities and indigenous peoples whose livelihood, identities, and traditional ways of life depend on the use of local lands and natural resources. This phenomenon is largely understudied because corruption, by its very nature, is hidden and therefore poorly documented.

Stresses views of conference participants that agrarian reform is an alive issue on the political agenda of many countries. A wide consensus on the positive contribution that more equal access to land and other assets makes to the fight against poverty. Meaningful reform must involve the transformation of property rights. Agrarian reform must involve state regulation to overcome the failure of markets to deliver equitable outcomes. Also a wide consensus on the need for strong and effective state action.

Looks at how the ESRC STEPS Centre intervened in debates on land grabbing following the financial crisis in 2007 and 2008, and how its work led it on to explore the impacts of ‘green grabs’ and ‘water grabs’, carbon offsetting, the green economy, the financialisation of nature, the Anthropocene and other aspects of ‘resource politics’.

Contains review of land policy formulation and implementation, land tenure challenges and activities in poverty reduction programmes and projects, stakeholder perspectives, lessons learned for mainstreaming land tenure security in poverty reduction.

Vital that the new Land Commission looks at the range of land issues in the round. Need comprehensive district by district approach, attuned to local circumstances and flexible. Enormous challenge to recreate a land administration system. Outlines vital elements and how they must work together.