Disputes over land are a prominent feature of many situations of protracted violent conflict in Burundi, Uganda and South Sudan. Research conducted as part of the programme ‘Grounding Land Governance’ underscores that war reshuffles access and ownership, but also critically changes the ways in which land is governed. Land issues often come to resonate with other conflicts in society, thereby affecting overall stability. This makes interventions in land governance politically sensitive.

After conflict, governments and donors often feel a need for up-scaling and modernizing land use. There is an ambition to achieve economic recovery and contribute to food security through stimulating large-scale investment in land. Our research in Uganda, Burundi and South Sudan suggests that policymakers should be extremely careful when promoting large-scale land acquisitions, both foreign and national. Especially in the difficult transition from war to peace, large-scale appropriation of land risks becoming a threat to tenure security and the recovery of rural livelihoods.

In post-conflict settings, securing tenure of local smallholders is considered of major importance to reduce and prevent local land disputes, to contribute to the recovery of rural livelihoods, and to improve agricultural production. Registration and other ways of formalizing land ownership are generally believed to significantly enhance local tenure security and rural development.

Land is in no doubt the most important asset in the lives of Kenyans. It is a factor of production which is core to the economic activities of this country. The advent of settlers and colonialism in East Africa placed land in a high level of importance than before. It is not a unique situation for Kenya. Wars have been fought world over with ownership of land and other resources associated with it being at the center of controversy. When colonialism set in, many people were displaced from their original homes.

Uganda’s progress in reducing poverty from 1993 to 2006 is a remarkable story of success that has been well told. The narrative of Uganda’s continued, albeit it slightly slower, progress in reducing poverty since 2006 is less familiar. This was a period in which growth slowed as the gains from reforms years earlier had been fully realized, and weak infrastructure and increasing corruption increasingly constrained private sector competitiveness (World Bank 2015). This report examines Uganda’s progress in reducing poverty, with a specific focus on the period 2006 to 2013.

A critical assessment of 22 years of land reform policies in South Africa. Concludes that land reform has been captured by elites. The most powerful voices are those of ‘emerging’ black capitalist farmers (often with non-farm incomes), traditional leaders, large-scale white commercial farmers and agribusiness corporates, who are all benefiting more than the poor.

Russia has experienced dramatic changes in land ownership and tenure since 1991: agricultural land has been largely privatized, individual landowners now have legal rights to most agricultural land in the country, and prohibitions on buying and selling of land have been recently removed. The necessary pre-conditions for the development of agricultural land markets have been met and we are beginning to witness transactions that involve individual landowners, and not only the state.

International Development, Land Economics/Use,

Este trabajo da cuenta de la visión de desarrollo y su incidencia en la implementación del acuerdo uno (1) de la Habana sobre Desarrollo Rural Integral, desde el enfoque de paz territorial y los mecanismos construidos para la consecución de la paz en sus territorios por las comunidades negras en el Medio Atrato Chocoano.

The Committee was briefed by the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR) on the performance of Communal Property Associations for March to December 2015. In all, 1 483 Communal Property Associations (CPAs) had been registered since the passing of the Act and 48 were registered in the 2015/16 financial year. The CPAs had been afflicted by a number of problems and the Department had taken steps to address them by the establishment of CPA District Fora to serve as a platform to share experiences.

Following the end of apartheid, South Africa’s government set itself ambitious goals with a planned land reform. However, there have since been barely any changes in the country’s agricultural structure, and the positive impacts that were hoped for on rural livelihoods have hardly materialised. A critical assessment of 22 years of land reform policies.