For historical reasons, Kenya inherited a highly skewed system of land ownership at independence in 1963. British colonialism in Kenya was not merely administrative. Rather, it was accompanied by massive and widespread land alienation for the benefit of settler agriculture. As a result the best agricultural land-the White Highlands and the adjacent rangelands were taken from the Africans, without compensation, and parceled out to white settlers. Colonial legislation was enacted to legalize this process.

The Historical Injustices Issues Paper seeks to present the various historical land claims issues and perspective related to them and consequently proffer policy statements for their redress.

The illegal and irregular allocations of public land as chronicled in the Ndungu Report amount to a rip-off that dwarfs the Goldenberg and Anglo-Leasing scandals. Our analysis in this first issue in the series covers Karura, Ngong Road and Kiptagich forests and suggests a loss of public resources in excess of Ksh.18.4 billion. The Ndungu Report covers ten other forests as well as other public land, ranging from road reserves to cemeteries to public toilets and even State House land. As we cover these in future issues of the series, the cumulative loss will certainly be astounding.

The report of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the Illegal/Irregular Allocation of Public Land is finally out! Popularly known as the ‘Ndung’u’ Report, the publication of this three-volume document is important to the Kenya Land Alliance for two major reasons. Firstly, the appointment of the Coordinator of the Kenya Land Alliance to the Commission marked a threshold in the relations between KLA and the Government of Kenya.

This paper was written as part of the research initiative entitled Engaging the Business Community as a New Peacebuilding Actor. It is a joint project of the Africa Centre for Dispute Settlement (ACDS), CDA Collaborative Learning Projects (CDA), and the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

We, leaders of groups of women affected by the expansion of industrial monoculture plantations, particularly oil palm plantations, coming from all regions in Sierra Leone and different countries from West and Central Africa;

We, national and international organizations involved in the struggle for the rights of women and local communities in Africa, Latin America and Asia, signatories of this declaration, met from 14 to 15 August 2017 in Port Loko, Sierra Leone.

Since 2004, the World Bank has provided continuous “investment climate advisory services” to Sierra Leone. Business reforms and Bank-piloted programs such as Sierra Leone Business Forum and the Sierra Leone Investment and Export Promotion Agency led to the World Bank classifying Sierra Leone among “the top 15 economies that improved their business regulatory environment the most” since 2005 and rank the country third in the regional “Protection of Investors” category.

There is wide engagement with large-scale land deals in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly from the perspectives of development and international political economy. Recently, scholars have increasingly pointed to a gendered lacuna in this literature. Engagement with gender tends to focus on potential differential impacts for men and women, and it also flags the need for more detailed empirical research of specific land deals.

The land grabbing issue has produced a plethora of debates ranging from ethical conduct of land grabbing agents, specifically concerning displacement, to evidence for and against positive externalities such as technological spill-overs and construction of infrastructure. An underexplored topic is the valuation of agricultural land and the compensatory payments made to land users, distinct from land owners, for the loss of their source of food security.

Since the onset of the phenomenon of large scale land acquisition for agri-business in Sierra Leone, after the first whistle was blown by Green Scenery, many studies have been conducted by various researchers, some to meet requirements for degree thesis, others for policy and development purposes. There is the fear in a school of thought opposed to large scale land acquisition that there is danger in corporate entities ascribing huge portions of land to themselves in the guise of investment and annihilating the actual land owners.

Sierra Leone’s new National Land Policy, recently approved by the cabinet, presents a progressive and ambitious plan for protecting land rights that will strengthen women’s access to land, give communities a bigger say over land management and create a better framework for major land investments. All of which is urgently in need if Sierra Leone’s future development is to benefit the entire nation.

In fulfillment of his manifesto promise to the people of Malen Chiefdom, Pujehun district  and in consonance with the new direction government's determination to tend to the needs and aspirations of its people generally and to promote foreign direct investment, in a peaceful just and inclusive society, His Excellency the president ,Retired Bragadier Dr. Julius Maada Bio, commissioned a mediation committee, headed by no less a person, than the Honourable Vice President Dr. Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh,   on the recurrent land dispute in Malen Chiefdom Pujehun district.