This lesson brief explores the multiple independent phenomena that affect relationships between farmers and herders, as well as the nature of their conflicts over natural resources in Mali. It is part of the Focus on Land in Africa: Land Tenure and Property Rights online educational tool.

Find here the "Call for Participants" and related information and forms for a year-long learning initiative 2011-2012 on ‘Making Rangelands Secure’,  including a 10-12 day learning route from Nairobi to Arusha, developed by the International Land Coalition and partners.

One year ago, the African Union declared 2010-2020 as African Women's Decade. The theme of this year is “Health, Maternal Mortality and HIV/AIDS”. This decade is a promise from African governments and the African Union to promote women's rights and achieve gender equality in Africa.
The African Women’s Decade is quite significant and unique. It officially puts women at the centre of every initiative or work that will be undertaken in Africa by the African Union, and its member states in the next 10 years.

The potential for off-farm employment (OFE) to contribute significantly to forest conservation in the tropics is a widely held logic among donors, governments, and social scientists. While an aggregate level examination of OFE cases can support this logic, there is disagreement as to the operative aspects of specific linkages and assumptions.

This policy brief focuses on ecotourism in north-eastern Kenya and is based on the analysis of two key existing ecotourism industry models in Laikipia and Isiolo. The purpose of the work was to provide the Government of Kenya (GoK) policymakers and private sector investors with a deeper understanding of the eco-tourism industry already established in the region. As highlighted, the study is based on two different ecotourism models (and four enterprises) in pro-pastoral communities in Laikipia and Isiolo using a framework of common qualitative measures of analysis.

This report provides an overview of land use conflicts in Loliondo. According to the Village Land Act No. 5 1999, all land in Loliondo is classified as Village Land. However, there is spatial overlap of Village Lands and a Game Controlled Areas. Prior to 2009 GCAs had not bearing on land use or management; however the 2009 Wildlife Conservation Act prohibits farming and livestock grazing in GCA. This new Act poses a huge problem to pastoral commuinities. An economic summary provides a better understanding of initial revenue that could be generated from Loliondo.

Conservation business is booming in East Africa, but is threatened by major long term wildlife declines. Pastoralist rangelands are among the highest-earning and fastest-growing tourism destinations, but their populations have mean incomes and development indices consistently below national averages. Governments and conservation organisations see green development, often through community-based conservation (CBC), as building sustainable livelihoods and biodiversity conservation in EA rangelands.

Conservation enterprises are commercial activities designed to create benefit flows that support a conservation objective. The Koija ‘Starbeds’ Ecolodge was created jointly by a community group, a private sector partner and the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) to help protect a critical wildlife corridor and habitat along the Ewaso Nyiro River in the Samburu Heartland (www.awf.org). Many conservation enterprises claim success mainly based on their noble intentions,

This paper presents a discussion of the communal tenure system in Olkiramatian, a group ranch in the southern rangelands of Kenya which has granted the residents the flexibility and choice to pursue diversification alternatives that demand open landscapes.

 In Kenya, the pastoral Maasai’s districts have been the vanguard in rangeland tenure transitions and experimentation as pastoralists’ territory gave way to communal group ranches and to individual land holdings under diverse land-use activities. The tenure transformations have been accompanied by institutional and socio-economic changes that have had bearings on local communities’ capacities for collective action, pastoral livelihoods, and environmental sustainability.

Forests and pastoralism are in a state of crisis in the Borana lowlands in southern Ethiopia. State management has failed to control forest exploitation and past and present development interventions continue to undermine pastoral production systems. In this paper the authors aim to show how a fundamental misunderstanding of pastoral land management, and in particular pastoral tenure systems, has undermined traditional institutions and the environment for which they were once responsible.

Significant progress has been made over the past decade or so in the development of policy and legislation that support the recognition of customary rights to land, with important legal rulings in Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique, South Sudan, and South Africa. At the same time, the strengthening of communities’ traditional rights to use resources has progressed through community forest reserves and community conservation areas.