A serious study of a neglected field, drawing on research, workshops, and personal and organisational testimonies. Covers Eritrea, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Aims to raise awareness of the heavy impact of HIV and AIDS on women’s property rights and livelihoods, and the active steps being taken by many grassroots organisations to respond to the crisis. Looks at a number of creative initiatives such as the Memory Book Project in Uganda.

The focus of the workshop, funded by FAO, Oxfam GB, and Women Land Link Africa Project (WLLA), was on children’s property rights. The report covers presentations by children, key issues and inspiring initiatives by CBOs, messages from the UN to children, experiences from Zimbabwe, very moving testimonies by children, key recommendations. Following the launch of a UNICEF and UNAIDS global campaign, FAO has been initiating work in the neglected area of children’s property and inheritance rights.

Provides an overview of key political, economic and strategic policy development options for the consolidation of land tenure policies and strengthened property rights and tenure security in Zimbabwe following land reform.

Contains introduction: property rights, inheritance, and HIV; the impact on development; challenging the roots of the problem; modern laws and individual rights: do they always support women?; pinpointing the difficulties with the existing legal frameworks; ways forward.

Argues that there are 5 shortcomings in both the old (World Bank) and contemporary (Hernando de Soto) arguments for formalisation of land title. First, legality is constructed narrowly to mean only formal legality. Therefore legal pluralism is equated with extra-legality. Second, there is an underlying social-evolutionist bias that presumes inevitability of the transition to private (conflated with individual) ownership as the destiny of all societies. Third, the presumed link between formal title and access to credit facilities has not been borne out by empirical evidence.

The paper explores whether the post-Cold War rule of law reform agenda in sub-Saharan Africa has enhanced or impeded gender equity. Argues that a large part of the gender equality agenda remains unaddressed by the legal and institutional reforms undertaken so far. The section on reforms to property laws suggests that they have at worst deepened gender inequality and at best left biases intact. Official discussion of gender and land tenure remains disconnected from broader processes of economic restructuring.

Covers (1) Land as a source of conflict in Africa – the multi-dimensional nature of land issues; indirect causes of conflict, land access and structural poverty; interactions between customary and state-managed tenure systems; historical injustices and land disputes. (2) Land rights during conflict – population displacement; land as a sustaining factor in conflict; land rights of women, children and marginalized communities.

Contains executive summary; food insecurity and the AIDS epidemic; barriers to women’s farming; women’s land rights; economic and social empowerment; violence against women; inheritance rights and property grabbing; politics, ideologies and vested interests; recommendations.

Contains overview of the land reform process and brief summaries of presentations made on: key elements and guiding principles in formulating land policy; political, economic, social and cultural issues on the land policy and land law reform process; implications of gearing the formulation of land policy and land laws as a stimulus for agricultural productivity; gaps, conflicts, contradictions, overlaps and inconsistencies in the existing land laws and what needs to be done in land legal reform.

AFJN travelled to Brewaniase, a town in Ghana’s Volta Region, to learn more about a potential land grab deal by Herakles Farms, a New York based agribusiness. Informed that Herakles Farm had acquired a large tract of land in the Volta Region. Less than a year ago the property was sold to a British company, Volta Red. This story is a warning to landowners in Africa and irresponsible African leaders who are carelessly mortgaging future generations’ inheritance during this global rush for land in Africa.

Contains introduction, conceptual framework, issues for the land policy (sovereignty, land tenure systems and issues, land and sustainable livelihoods, land administration and management, natural resources, land markets, land/property taxation), policy implementation, the gaps and areas for future study.

Short summary of a Ph.D. thesis. The dominance of the white farm issue has delayed serious attention to more subtle land conflicts. Thesis focuses on the continued maintenance of communal land rights by urban property owners. Explores what would happen if these rights disappeared. In reality and in the absence of explicit state policy, poor families and women are already relinquishing these rights, which has very practical implications for urbanisation.