Land in Cameroon is under growing pressure – powerful commercial interests;changing climate conditions and shifting demographic flows including mass migration and increasing population density. The rights of rural communities and indigenous people to access and use land for farming and grazing have been eroded,  primarily due to failure to recognise customary land tenure rights;land use conflicts and lack of effective local governance. The country’s land legislation is outdated and not compatible with customary law and local realities.

An encouraging story about how four communities regained control of their lands acquired by the Bioshape jatropha plantation in Kilwa District. Contains the Bioshape investment and the local response; from community-centred dialogue to government commitments; a reason to celebrate; next steps: consolidating community land tenure in Kilwa and Tanzania.

Land is a commodity like no other. We live on it;we grow from it;we drink from it and build our futures upon it. But we don’t share it equally. The distribution of land has long defined the gap between rich and poor. Now new data shows clearer than ever how the way in which land is being shared and managed profoundly impacts extreme and rising inequality and the achievement of women’s and girlsrights. With the largest 1 percent of farms operating more than 70 percent of the world’s farmland;it is time that we called out the problem of extreme land inequality and committed to ending it.

This article argues that while we know that the demand for land and natural resources has significantly accelerated in the last decade;it remains very difficult to gauge the exact size of the land rush. Many studies that look into how much land is affected give vastly diverging numbers. Local elites and diaspora investors are known for controlling large areas in their home countries and their activities tend to be even less transparent than those of international investors. Many studies choose not to include domestic investors.

Africa’s Catholic bishops have criticized the appropriation of land;natural resources and other economic assets by private companies and called on national governments to show greater concern for local community rights and needs. They said: ‘The impunity of corporate and elite capture of African land and natural resources and the damage this is doing to Africa’s food systems;to our environment;our soils;lands and water;our biodiversity;our nutrition and health is a major concern.

This comic is based on field research conducted around the Feronia palm oil plantation in Tshopo province in north-east DR Congo as part of a project on ‘environmental defenders and atmospheres of violence’. The story focuses on people living next to the Feronia concession and how they experience and fight against the company. While the names in the comic are fictional;the described events are based on testimonies gathered during field research.

A 22 minute video about one of the biggest cases of agricultural land grabbing in Senegal: 20,000 hectares;first allocated to Senhuile-Sénéthanol;now known as Les Fermes de la Téranga. The Italian investors Tampieri Financial Group pulled out of the project in 2017 and the new owners – Agro Industries Corp;based in the tax haven of the Cayman Islands – arrived in 2018.

Covers: land law revision; President starts land law consultation – with battle over privatisation expected; contradictions put a progressive land law under pressure. By 2018 the Norwegian company Green Resourcesland grab had given it 369,000 ha in Mozambique;which it finally admits it cannot handle and now proposes to give most of it back to the communities it was taken from. A consultation on the revision of the 25-year-old land law was launched by President Filipe Nyusi on 16 July 2020 but it will be controversial.

The Key Messages on Sustaining Peace through Women’s Empowerment and Increased Access to Land and Property Rights in Fragile and Conflict-affected Contexts were intended to provide a reference on how to empower women and protect their housing;land and property rights in fragile and crisis affected contexts;and to set out why this is an essential element to sustain peace and stability. The publication includes a list of resources to further inform the development of related programmes and projects.

On 5 March 2021 the Namibian Ministry of Land Reform issued 988 land holder titles to nine associations in Freedom Square;an informal settlement in Gobabis municipality;with an additional 122 to be printed in due course. This is a huge milestone to the residents of Freedom Square and to the stakeholders championing the improvement of tenure security of middle and low-income groups residing in different informal settlements of Namibia.

A policy brief introducing a new book edited by Khwezi Mabasa and Bulelwa Mabasa. The book examines how land and agrarian reform impacts nation building;citizenship and identity formation. It draws attention to the limitations of reducing land to a commodity and how this approach perpetuates social conflict and inequality in land reform policy implementation. The brief argues that it is important to explore the contested meanings of land in society. These varied meanings challenge traditional land reform perspectives.

A review of a book on land in Kenya published in 2020 by Boydell and Brewer Ltd. The reviewer offers a detailed analysis and discussion of the 8 chapters of this 224-page book. The chapters are entitled: introduction: what we talk about when we talk about land; land reform in Kenya: the history of an idea; making mischief: land in modern Kenya; land and constitutional change; the new institutional framework for land governance; land governance before the Supreme Court; rethinking historical land injustices; taking justice seriously.