A website link to a series of documents on the global political agreement one year on, land reform ‘success’ and ‘viability’ in Zimbabwe, myths and realities in Zimbabwe’s land reform, adding to the evidence base, policy dialogue – charting the way forward, a panel debate, photographs, interviews with beneficiaries.

In Liberia it is estimated that around half the country’s land mass has been promised to foreign companies and investors. From 2009-11 the Sustainable Development Institute and NAMATI embarked on an action research project to support rural communities to protect, document, and manage their customary lands and natural resources. Drawing from lessons learned in the field, they sought to bring the voices and realities from rural Liberia to influential policymakers.

Includes background; conceptual framework; methodology; research findings – security of tenure, cultural practices, gender inequalities, land utilisation, constraints to production, a passion for farming, gender bias against women farmers in access to and utilization of land; lessons learnt, recommendations.

Includes land reform: perpetuating patriarchal land policies?; Fast Track Land Reform: decentralisation or recentralisation?; women’s access to land in the land reform process; constraints faced by women in accessing land; who is pushing the agenda for better access to and utilisation of land for women?; conclusion: women beneficiaries of land reform; recommendations.

Despite programmes for rural land reform and redistribution around the world, inequitable land distribution and rural poverty remain profound in much of the rural South. Suggests a new approach to land reform and rural development. ‘Rural territorial development’ is based on and encourages shared territorial identity (distinctive productive, historical, cultural and environmental features) amongst different stakeholders and social groupings. Builds on the fact that rural people’s livelihood strategies are complex and often mostly non-agricultural in nature.

Review comprises an introduction and country surveys of Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe. Reflects on countries’ experiences up to the first part of 2010 and highlights lessons for land policy and practice.

Includes land reform and customary tenure in sub-Saharan Africa: a brief review; methodology; the statutory underpinnings of large-scale land acquisition; land acquisition in practice: evidence from case-study countries – Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia; discussion and conclusions – legal protection of customary rights, customary rights in the context of large-scale land acquisitions, evidence from implementation.

Nuanetsi Ranch had been invaded by villagers from different parts of Mwenezi, Chiredzi and Chivi communal areas since 2000. In February 2010, the government announced that the settlers had to be removed and resettled in other ’uncontested lands’ in the area, compromising their rights to sustainable livelihoods, human development and land acquisition. The perceptions of the men and women resident at Chigwizi has had a bearing on understanding the nature of gendered land and rural livelihoods in the context of biofuel production in Zimbabwe, after fast track land reform.

The thesis offers a sociological understanding of intermediary NGOs in the modern world through a study of NGOs and land reform in contemporary Zimbabwe. Since 2000, a radical restructuring of agrarian relations has occurred, based upon the massive redistribution of land. Local empowering initiatives have dramatically asserted themselves against globalizing trajectories. These changes have posed serious challenges to land NGOs involved in land reform either as advocates for reform or as rural development NGOs.

Divided into 7 sections: introduction – tenure insecurity, poverty and power relations; the subordination of customary land rights; attempts to make amends; an end of century turn-around – towards the liberation of customary land rights; launching reform through new policy and law; the need to assure success; how to make land reform work? Argues that dramatic improvement in the legal status of customary land interests is globally on the horizon.

The spread and deepening of economic globalisation has highlighted the ever closer connections between the international legal arrangements for the governance of the global economy on the one hand, and claims to land and natural resources on the other. In a globalised world, land governance is shaped by international as well as national regulation. As pressures on valuable lands intensify and land relations become more trans-national, increasing recourse to international investment treaties is redesigning spaces for land claims at local and national levels.

Examines the policies and practices on land of the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID). While DFID’s approach to land reform in the 1980s reflected the dictates of modernisation, formal registration and market-led distribution of land of the IFIs, this was followed 1997-2002 by a period where changes were made to move in the direction of a rights-based approach.