Includes objectives, programme, welcome message, official opening, hopes and fears, introduction to LandNet, presentations, group work on land rights, redistribution, decentralisation, and the role of civil society, key issues, closing. The workshop endeavoured to publicise the findings of grassroots consultations on land carried out by LandNet members in order that these be incorporated into the forthcoming National Land Policy and the PRSP. Among the issues raised were insecurity and inequitable distribution and the ways in which land disputes are currently handled.

Contains introduction, progress and impacts since Addis Ababa, vision of LandNet West Africa, principles of operation, expected impacts, activities at sub-regional level.

Report on meeting of core group of LandNet West Africa with representatives from Ghana, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Nigeria, Togo. Includes details of networking activities in these countries, lessons, successes and good practice, constraints and risks, funding, preparation for a regional workshop in February.

Legal processes can help improve the lives of the poor in developing countries e.g. through establishing fair rules on international trade and securing land access in rural Africa. For this to happen, poorer actors – whether individuals or states – must have equitable access to the legal system, including a fair say in law-making processes, and access to effective enforcement institutions.

Summarises highlights from the first two and a half years of the programme, including insights on the legal levers that can be used to maximise local voice and benefit from local land rights to investor-state contracts through to community-investor partnerships, as well as a few milestones in IIED’s work on legal literacy training, exchange of experience and policy advocacy.

Report of planning workshop of the newly formed Kenya Land Alliance. Covers objectives, activities and membership, institutional framework, existing resources and a workplan.

Report of consultation of NGOs on land policy advocacy. Covers advocacy, policy and law, and designing a framework for effective land policy advocacy.

Includes executive summary; the land issue – International and regional perspectives; Oxfam and land issues on the Copperbelt; land issues in Zambia; land policy review process; genesis of the 1995 Lands Act; Constitutional Review process; challenges for the future; conclusion.

Civil society formations in Africa have historically played an important part in the establishment of organising people in the pursuit of common goals. The majority of Africa’s people reside in rural areas where they derive their livelihoods from land, and for this majority secure access to land is the foundation of any efforts to alleviate poverty. Land reforms in Africa are at various stages of development in a number of countries, partly in response to pressures for liberalisation and privatisation from the World Bank and other like-minded institutions.

Investigates the effectiveness of NGOs’ strategies and methods to influence land policy reform. Report based on a study of 7 NGOs promoting land reform and land rights in Mozambique and Kenya. Covers country contexts – NGO sectors and land policy reform; NGOs in the policy process – roles and relationships; assessing the impact of NGOs on land policy processes; key findings and lessons. Studies show that legislation and regulations can be modified, reinterpreted or ignored during implementation, when local level power relations become critical.

Reports from meeting near Bilbao from peasants in South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Niger, Mali, Senegal and Ghana. Almost everywhere in Africa the elite and corporations are undertaking efforts to capture and control people’s basic means of production, such as land, mineral resources, seeds and water. These resources are increasingly being privatized due to the myriad of investment agreements and policies driven by new institutional approaches, imposed on the continent by western powers and Bretton Woods institutions.

ROAPE’s Janet Bujra questions Marjorie Mbilinyi about her fifty years of campaigning against patriarchal oppression on many fronts in Tanzania. Mbilinyi traces the legitimisation of feminism as a means to understand and a way to organise for and with women. This is not a feminism lifted from Europe or the US, but one generated in response to Tanzanian and African realities.