Resource information
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.
The second part of this infosheet analyses ongoing transformations in and policies on pastoralism in the Great Lakes Region, which also has a significant effect on rural livelihoods and land use patterns. Pastoralism is widespread in the region, and plays an important role in contestation over land. Issues at stake are the increasing enclosure of former communal lands, competition with other land users, and limitations on cross-border movement. Pastoralists are perceived as privileged by incumbent power holders, which adds to contestation, while small pastoralists are marginalized by their elite brothers.