The first meeting of the sub-committee on Geo-information was held at Headquarters of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 29 June to 2 July 1999.
An Act to provide for the management and administration of land in villages, and for related matters.
The status of cadastral and land information systems in Africa is assessed, with specific reference to their capacity to assist decision-makers. Recommendations and guidelines are provided for the adaptation of existing systems and/or the development of new systems, so that they can be used for land reform, physical planning and integrated land administration. The guidelines take into account the need to create land information for decision-makers without creating unaffordable costs to the state, given that the average per capita income for Africa in 1995 was USD665.
The full Report, covering evolution of land policy and law, overview of land problems, current land tenure systems, systems of inheritance and land administration, settlement of land disputes, towards a new land policy and legal framework, and strategy for policy development.
Issa Shivji is Professor of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Executive Director of the Land Rights Research and Resources Institute (LARRRI) or Hakiardhi (in Swahili). He is an acknowledged authority on land law in Africa and chaired the 1991-2 Presidential Commission of Enquiry into Land Matters. Here he examines the new Land Acts, including fundamental principles, land administration and allocation, village titling, land grabbing, dispute settlements, gender, youth and children, and concludes with the ’virtues’ of the Acts.
Describes (1) the processes of privatization of land management in selected transition countries and (2) the post-privatization changes in land administration institutions which are being crafted to establish land markets. It begins with the proposition that there are similar land market institutional problems which most "transition" countries are facing, due largely to common experiences in creating command economies during the past 50-80 years and the almost simultaneous decisions of these countries to move toward market political economies in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Examines—from the perspective of transaction costs—factors that constrain access to land for the rural poor and other socially excluded groups in India. They find that: Land reform has reduced large landholdings since the 1950s. Medium-size farms have gained most. Formidable obstacles still prevent the poor from gaining access to land. The complexity of land revenue administration in Orissa is partly the legacy of distinctly different systems, which produced more or less complete and accurate land records.
