"I worked for ten years with my husband to build our house on the land we bought, but he died unexpectedly. His daughters expelled me from my house and my land. He and I lived together for fifteen years but I had no means to claim my rights and was not aware of my [vulnerable] situation." --Maria José, from Caruaru

For rural people, especially low-income rural people, land and livelihood are one and the same. Access to land means the opportunity to earn a decent income and achieve food and nutrition security, and it can also pave the way for access to social benefits such as health care and education. A lack of secure land access, on the other hand, can disempower rural people and expose them to the combined threats of poverty, hunger and conflict.

This is the story of how dozens of communities in Mozambique are mapping and documenting their own land rights. "A New Hope" is the winner of the Land Portal's Second Data Story Contest, and is authored by the team at Terra Firma Mozambique.  

COVID-19 and climate change are impacting all of us, but the dual disasters have a disproportionate impact on communities in emerging economies. These impacts are felt most acutely in rural areas, especially among indigenous communities and minority groups, and by women and others who are marginalized within those groups.

Platforms struggle to support communities to secure their land rights and develop agriculture

About 350 land actors from government, academia, civil society and business came together from more than 15 states and outside India to discuss and debate various land issues. In more than 30 sessions, about 150 speakers and panelists deliberated over 3 days around interdisciplinary land-conversations to generate important information and evidence for policy, practice and academics.

Ten important land messages that emerge from these land conversations are:

Forests are critically important for many of the world’s poor who depend on them for food, income, medicine and building materials. As such, forests are a nexus of broadly held policy goals such as poverty reduction, economic growth, conservation and climate change. Most forests in the developing world are governed, in practice, through community-based tenure systems.

When I was young, I was taught through my Maasai heritage that a woman is the property of her husband and is valued on the basis of how many children she can produce – and not by her education or economic success. 

Will skyscrapers one day represent the prosperity that every Angolan citizen has dreamed about? Perhaps.

From the Middle East to North America, high-rise buildings and skyscrapers are cropping up as a symbol of wealth and prosperity in global cities. Modern Africa has experienced unprecedented urban growth and embraced zoning regulations and reforms that incentivize high-density growth and mixed-use buildings in major metropolitan areas. 

During my recent trip to Luanda, the capital of Angola, the first thing that caught my attention was the city’s skyline.

Africa remains a net food importing region spending more than USD 35 billion annually on food imports, although this continent has about 65% of the uncultivated arable land left in the world to feed 9 billion people by 2050 (AfDB, 2016). Land tenure remains a major challenge across the continent and only about 10% of Africa’s rural land is registered. In Cameroon, in particular, land as an asset, an input or an income source is not equally possessed by any individual or household with respect to gender and place of living.