LADM covers essential information associated components of land administration and management including those over water and elements above and below the surface of the earth. LADM standard provides an abstract conceptual model with three packages and one sub-package. LADM defined terminology for a land administration system that allows a shared explanation of different formal customary or informal tenures. The standard provides the basis for national and regional profiles and enables the combination of land management information from different sources in a coherent manner.

Depuis 1983 la Mauritanie est engagée dans un processus de réforme foncière. Le système de la tenure foncière traditionnelle du sol est aboli. L'individualisation est de droit. La réforme a pour but la mise en valeur accélérée de la terre afin d'augmenter la production alimentaire du pays. La région du Trarza-Est, dans la vallée du fleuve Sénégal a été choisie par les autorités mauritaniennes comme zone expérimentale.

The central themes of this book are customary law, traditional leadership and local land management. International policy is currently witnessing a renewed interest in customary tenure systems and traditional leadership, through which it aims to enhance the efficiency of local governance, and create general access to and secure rights in land. Contrary to these ideas, practice reveals a lack of security of customary tenure in many areas.

Analyse, basée sur une recherche effectuée en 1982 et 1983 en Basse-Casamance, région située dans le sud-ouest du Sénégal, de la manière dont l'Etat sénégalais utilise la législation en matière foncière pour tenter de parvenir au niveau local le plus bas, celui du simple paysan. Après un aperçu de l'évolution du droit foncier à l'époque coloniale, l'auteur décrit dans les grandes lignes la réforme foncière de 1964 et la réforme administrative de 1972.

The papers included in this volume were earlier presented at a conference on the settlement of land claims in Africa, which was held in Amsterdam in September 2003. The papers are written primarily from an anthropological perspective.

Access to land is increasingly becoming a problem in Africa as a result both of population growth and tenure reforms. The standard argument for tenure reform centres on the role of uncertainty in discouraging investment on land held without long-term security. The rationale for this 'replacement' paradigm, however, can be questioned on economic, ecological and social grounds. The history of land tenure reform in Kenya, especially that of group titles in the semiarid areas, is a case in point.