Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is a key tool for both environmental and land management. It identifies potential adverse and unintended consequences of the projects on land use and the environment and derives possible mitigation measures to address these impacts. Calculating the volume and severity of impacts is complex and often relies on selections and simplifications. Moreover, calculating impacts associated with nomadic-pastoral (dynamic) land use is still an unresolved methodological problem.

With the end of the civil war in Burundi, the government began a transitional justice process to consolidate peace and deal with the legacies of past violations. Part of the transitional justice work in the country has been restitution of land and other property – a process that has provoked further violence and, to some extent, threatened national unity. Political elites have hijacked the land restitution process in a way that has shaped land conflicts on the ground and affected national politics.

Two new papers by Sandra Bhatasara and Kirk Helliker on land occupations in Shamva and Bindura Districts;Mashonaland Central;are analysed. They offer nuanced accounts of what happened. As previous studies have shown;the story is not straightforward. Includes history and memory;organising occupations;the occupiers;rise of the party-state;why does this history matter? Concludes that together these two papers shed important light on the land occupation period.

For many decades communities in West and Central Africa have been facing industrial oil palm plantations encroaching onto their community land. With the false promise of bringing ‘developmentand jobs;corporations;backed up by the support of the governments;have been granted millions of hectares of land under concessions for industrial oil palm plantations. The results of this expansion have been disastrous for communities living in and around these industrial plantations and in particular for women.

The dynamics of land occupation in Conakry is approached from the angle of both the colonial authorities and the local dwellers. The former took upon themselves the power of allocating plots and strove to enforce a colonial urban pattern. The latter succeeded in partly appropriating the town in spite of the minutiae of the law. As the urban area extended, Conakry was divided into three zones according to an ordinance of 1905. Although the third zone was officially termed 'native', there were no ethnic or national criteria.

Abstract: To avoid illegal occupation of people in areas where construction is forbidden and the development of informal settlements, municipal authorities must anticipate city planning. The implementation of layouts and cadastral plans, plays a broad range of uses in: taxation, land development, land registration, urban planning and design of infrastructure necessary to improve the living conditions of the population. This paper aims to demonstrate that, the integration of images of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is an alternative solution to the production of cadastral maps.

Le Togo a connu une forte croissance économique dont la poursuite devra être soutenue par l’amélioration du secteur foncier. La croissance économique de plus de 5% annuellement depuis 2009 est parmi les meilleurs du continent. Cette évolution s’est accompagnée d’une réduction de la pauvreté qui demeure cependant élevée à environ 55% (2015). La ville de Lomé a été l’un des piliers de ce développement, servant de base arrière au Port de Lomé, principal moteur de l’économie du pays.

Like in a number of other developing countries, the issue of illegal occupation of land is evident in Zambia’s cities. This problem has continued to exist, despite the existence of laws and public institutions meant to address the issue. The objectives of this paper were to establish the factors that lead to continued illegal land occupation in Zambia’s cities, establish the consequences of illegal occupation of land, and suggest how illegal occupation of land can be eradicated.