Food insecurity has been a major global development concern. Hence, SDG Two seeks to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030. The situation is severe in sub-Saharan Africa, where customary practices deprive women of land ownership and limit their access rights. This paper explores the influences of a gendered land tenure system on food security in Nandom District, adapting conditional assessment modules defined by USDA and FAO. With a list of households categorized under headship, 30 respondents were proportionally selected from each of the four study communities.

According to a 2008 World Bank Report, Uganda is among the countries with the youngest population and the highest youth unemployment rate of 83%. During the reading of the 2011/2012 budget of Uganda, the then Minister of Finance recognized that because of the high levels of unemployment, the Ugandan economy can only absorb 20% of its youth. Owing to this, this demographic has often been described as a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.The above notwithstanding, Uganda is blessed with an abundance of land and land-based resources which remain largely underutilized.

Issues surrounding customary land governance reforms remain at the forefront of policy reforms in many African countries because of concern over discriminatory rules of access, exchange, and inheritance, corruption, elite capture, and illegal land occupations, (Arko Adjei, 2009). The shortcomings in customary land governance extend to the unfettered authority of customary land trustees, usually, traditional leaders (chiefs and family heads) who retain autonomous control over land as defined by customary norms and practices.

Most of the land in sub-Saharan Africa is governed under various forms of customary tenure. Over the past three decades a quiet paradigm shift has been taking place transforming the way such landl is governed. Driven in part by adaptations to changing context but also accelerated by neo-liberal reforms, this shift has created a ‘new’ customary tenure in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper reviews some of the evidence and analyses the ways in which this neo-liberalisation of customary tenure has been transforming relations of production and how land is governed in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Community Land Act of 2016 provides a legal basis for protection, recognition and registration of community lands andhas provisions for management and administration of the land by the communities themselves. However, implementation of the act has been slower than anticipated. This is despite the current  heightened investment interests in community lands for mega development projects.

En el año 2000, se intensificaron las amenazas de expansión de la frontera agrícola, extracción de madera, cacería comercial y pesca masiva no controlada, creándose conflictos entre aripaeños y foráneos por el uso del bosque y sus espacios. Por ello, los comunarios del lugar iniciaron las conversaciones para concretar un Acuerdo de Conservación.

This guide provides background information on the original project and pilot implementation, describes the model and its components, and provides the reasoning and objectives behind each activity to help implementers understand the model’s strengths and make informed decisions about tailoring the existing model for the context in which they plan to work.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and critically examine newer alternative approaches to the securitization of customary land rights in Sub-Saharan Africa with particular emphasis on certain challenges which need to be tackled in order for these to have an inclusive and equitable outcome at the local level. The content of the paper is primarily based on a literature review though the challenges identified with these new approaches are based on observations from the author’s own on-going research on the land tenure reform in Mozambique.

There is today a growing awareness of the importance of providing rural populations with more secure tenure to land and other natural resources, not least in Africa where approximately 90 percent of all land is still unregistered. At the same time there has been a rethinking of approaches for securing local tenure rights in practice. Experience has shown that the conventional approach, i.e., individual freehold titling, has often not worked well in areas where communal forms of customary tenure predominate, which is still the case in most parts of rural sub-Saharan Africa.

Argues that the institutionalization of ethnic federalism and the persistence of neo-customary tenure result in considerable ambiguity, particularly regarding the land rights of non-indigenous minorities. Highlights tensions between these three sets of land tenure institutions – state ownership, ethnic federalism and neo-customary tenure – and their implications for minority land rights.

Malawi, like other countries in Africa, has a new land policy designed to clarify and formalise customary tenure. The country is poor with a high population density, highly dependent on agriculture, and the research sites are matrilineal-matrilocal, and near urban centres. But the case raises issues relevant to land tenure reform elsewhere: the role of ‘traditional authorities’ or chiefs vis-a-vis the state and ‘community’; variability in types of ‘customary’ tenure; and deepening inequality within rural populations.

Includes learning from the commercial sector – freehold title deeds, pre-1980-2010; learning from Zimbabwean customary tenure systems; learning from the state resettlement programme – permit tenure, 1980-2010; fast track land reform, 2000-2010, policy implications and recommendations.