This issue of Land Reform, Land Settlement and Cooperatives contains an interesting and

wide-ranging set of contributions providing insights into land related issues ranging from

Italy to the Central Andes, and from the historical development of sustainable tenure

practices to aspects of agriculture sector planning.

The eight articles featured open with that of Lavigne Delville, which addresses issues

relating to insecurity of tenure in West Africa, and identifies what the paths of change

This paper discusses the role of FAO support to the Government of Mozambiques Land Commission since 1995, through three consecutive projects. While each has had a relatively short duration, all have been planned and implemented within a single conceptual framework with a much longer time horizon. This has allowed a difficult and complex issue to be progressively developed and nurtured within a realistic time scale, while building up a strong sense of national ownership of the process.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the economic effects of land reform policies in

Tajikistan on the country’s agricultural sector and rural households. There is a conspicuous

lack of evidence-based policy dialogue with the government on the effectiveness of land and

agricultural policies in Tajikistan. Though the majority of rural inhabitants live in poverty and

many are food insecure, a scientifically proper evaluation of the effects of land and farm

policy reforms has yet to be done. The present study is an attempt to fill this void by offering

The papers contained in this issue have been selected from those presented at a series of workshops, held in 2002 in Hungary, Uganda, Mexico and Cambodia, that were organized by the World Bank jointly with the Department for International Development (DFID), the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and with FAO, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the African development Bank (AfDB), the European Union (EU), the International Land Coalition, Oxfam, and other bilateral an

The former socialist countries of Eastern Europe (that is, Europe east of Germany and west of the Urals, but including all of Russia) began a transition to a market economy in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. This paper looks at one aspect of that transition: the transition from state ownership to private ownership of agricultural land and the accompanying transition to a land market for agricultural land.

Issues relating to land and land reform have been moving up the agenda of rural poverty and food security in recent years with the increasing acceptance that the prerequisites for broad-based and equitable development include the essential need for people to have access to land and other natural resources. Access needs to be on an equitable basis allowing the poor and the disadvantaged, including women, to secure the assets needed for them and their families to generate sustainable livelihoods.

This article brings together key lessons from the Northern Cape Land Reform Project in which FARM-Africa works with the South African Government to support six poor Northern Cape communities that have benefited from the Government's Land Reform Programme.

This Topic Guide is written for DFID staff, but is relevant to all development professionals. It comprises the following sections:

This case study has been produced in response to a request made to the Evidence on Demand Helpdesk. The objective of the request was to write a detailed case study on land tenure reform in a fragile and post-conflict state, Burma, and provide the reader with an understanding of how land tenure reform can work under the country’s particular social, political and economic conditions.

This paper reviews the performance of
the parastatal sector, with a specific focus on four main
parastatals: the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority
(ZESA); the Zimbabwe Water Authority (ZINWA); the National
Oil Company of Zimbabwe (NOCZIM); and the Grain Marketing
Board (GMB). These parastatals are selected on the basis of
their quasi-fiscal dependency and strategic importance to

This study is an effort to understand the relationship between HIV/AIDS and land reform in South Africa. It is conceptualised as a longitudinal study covering three years. The study is presently concluding its first year, which has focused on 10 sites in three provinces and the information herein is considered baseline data. Much of the analysis in this report pertains to the nature of land reform projects and land-based livelihoods, and infers the connection to HIV/AIDS rather than observes it directly.

The institutional change in rural Kyrgyzstan during the transition period included farm reorganization, land reform, building markets, and community institutions. The land reform established private property rights to land, including the rights to transfer, exchange, sell, lease, and use the land as collateral for credit. These key features of Kyrgyzstan’s agrarian transition are in sharp contrast with those of other transition countries in Central Asia.