The acquisition of land by foreigners in developing countries has emerged as a key mechanism for foreign direct investment (FDI). FDI is defined by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as the category of international investment that reflects the objective of a resident entity in one economy to obtain a lasting interest in an enterprise resident in another economy.

Conventional notions of the ‘land parcel’ have been extended: previously unrecognized tenures including customary, nomadic, or communal interests are now incorporated into the concept. Technical tools including the Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM) enable these new understandings to be operationalized in land administration systems. The nomadic pastoralists of Kenya’s dry land regions illustrate where these new approaches can be applied.

The mandate of the Kenya Government in its objective to achieve sustainable development is to reduce poverty by half by 2015 and transform the country into a newly industrailized nation by the year 2020. This paper reviews the cadastral systems that have been formulated and implemented in Kenya ; the different concepts and techniques used in the preparation of cadastral survey plans and maps; and the impact of the cadastre as a source of spatial data in support of land administration processes.

Various multilateral organisations, for instance the World Bank, the Food and Agricultural Organisation have been at the forefront of the different programmes designed to enhance tenure security of landholders as the basis for long-term agricultural development. This has been the case especially in parts of the world where customary systems of tenure are predominant. Wily argues that ‘so little of sub-Saharan Africa is subject to formal entitlements as legally recognised private properties’.

Land sector challenges are vast and complex. Insecure rights to land continues to affect more than 2 billion people living in urban and rural informality worldwide, with women, youth and indigenous people faring the worst. We need more strategic partnerships, at all levels, that drive innovative thinking and provide practical solutions to these tenure security challenges.

Contains the urban poverty challenge; from illegality to formal tenure; segregation of space – an urban poverty challenge; from government to governance; the role of the state; government as a land owner; management of public land and public spaces; settlement of administrative and community boundaries; local land tenure regularisation; better information and the role of statistical data.

Ensuring the collective survival of indigenous peoples requires guaranteeing their rights and access to traditional lands. In Colombia, indigenous peoples’ struggle for ancestral land rights has been ongoing for more than four centuries, marked by collective mobilization and pressure before official entities.

Mailo tenure is the most legislated form of tenure in Uganda, having its origins in the 1900 Buganda Agreement. Reforms over the years have seen the evolution of this tenure that is essentially freehold in nature, albeit with its local characteristics arising out of an unresolved tenant question. This status quo was reinstated in the 1995 Constitution, the Land Act and its subsequent amendments. Whereas it is expected that reforms introduced by the Constitution and Land Act would suffice in stabilizing Mailo tenure, this has not happened in practice.

Key messages:

Evidence shows that women can benefit from having individualised land rights formalized in their names. However, similar evidence is not available for formalization of land rights that are based on collective tenure. Studies have estimated that as much as 65 percent of the world’s land is held under customary, collective-tenure systems. Improving tenure security for land held collectively has been shown to improve resource management and to support self-determination of indigenous groups.

In the six months since the coronavirus began its global spread, more than 15 million people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and more than 600,000 have perished, causing governments around the world to institute lockdowns and shut down businesses while entire industries have been devastated.

A guide to tenure and foreign ownership to support property investment