With all the focus on land grabbing and food security, water issues tend to be an afterthought. Foreign investments tend to be concentrated around the main African river basins. Water resources are lifelines for locals, so understanding the legal framework governing investments is critical. Covers how abundant are Africa’s water resources?; what does the evidence show?; the legal framework governing water rights and farmland investments; domestic law and contracts; international investment, freshwater, environmental and human rights law; 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.

The 3 case studies are located against the backdrop of changing land governance, tenure policy and legislation in Botswana, Madagascar and Mozambique. They examine how power and authority over decision-making and resources or functions is distributed between central, regional and local levels of governance. They explore the roles and perspectives of other actors such as non-governmental bodies, traditional governance institutions, user associations or village committees, the private sector and other organisations of civil society.

Summary: Includes land acquisitions continue to be an important trend; a need for this new, updated report; agricultural land acquisitions are increasingly becoming operational; food crops dominate but also palm oil and fuel crops; Africa is the most targeted continent; large diversity in origin of investors; land acquisitions often target relatively highly populated areas dominated by croplands; local communities are often bypassed in negotiations, limited information on displacement and compensation; a need for further monitoring.

Equitable access to land is vital for inclusive economic growth, sustainable development and food security. Much is known about the topics of land governance and food security, but it is not always clear how the two relate to each other, especially in specific country contexts. Brings together findings and outcomes from Uganda, Ghana and Ethiopia to provide policy recommendations for improved land governance and food security in Africa.

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.

Investigates private sector investment in conservation and ecotourism through conservancy land leases in the Mara region of Kenya. In recent and growing tourism development, groups of Maasai landowners are leasing their parcels of land to tourism investors and forming wildlife conservancies. Examines this model and the implications it has for Maasai livelihoods and the environment. Given the large extent and recent change in ownership in these areas, land leases do however keep the lands they cover together and are potentially an optimistic outlook for such open rangeland areas.

Focuses on the rush by foreign investors to buy up agricultural land across Africa, all too often at the expense of the wellbeing and livelihoods of local communities.

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.

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.