News on Land

A Prominent leader of thought in the Niger Delta region, and President-General of the Urhobo Progress Union (UPU), Dr. Moses Taiga, has dismissed hope of a positive outcome of the ongoing probe of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) by the National Assembly. In this interview, he described the drama occasioned by the exercise as a reflection of the bane of leadership crippling the agency, blaming the successive administrations for their wrong appointments.

The Food and Agricultural Organization(FAO), in collaboration with Friends of the Nation (FoN), has held a two-day capacity building workshop for journalists to improve on the reporting of food security issues.

The workshop was to enhance the media coverage of the management and protection of fish landing and processing sites in the face of intense pressures for land-use changes along the coast of Ghana.

The World Food Programme said on Friday it was rapidly scaling up operations in Democratic Republic of Congo with millions facing "the world's second biggest hunger emergency."

The United Nations agency said it needed $172 million to prevent millions from plunging deeper into hunger over the next six months.

"WFP is ramping up operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo to meet increasing needs - a consequence of escalating conflict and displacement, disease, extreme poverty, poor harvests and COVID-19," spokesperson Elisabeth Byrs told reporters.

The residents stated that Nwoko had successfully bought over senior policemen in Delta State and Abuja, who allegedly assisted him in intimidating and arresting those, who opposed his attempt to forcefully acquire additional 90 hectares of land from an area earmarked for all indigenes of the community.

Residents of Idumuje Ugboko community in Delta State have accused former senator, Ned Nwoko, of using the police and Ministry of Justice to dubiously harass, intimidate and lock up elders and sons of the town.

(Main photo: Indonesia - Employment in agriculture, services and industry [% of total employment]. The data is according to the World Bank compilation of development indicators, collected from official sources.)

The rate at which the country is losing farmers is a cause for concern. If it continues, Indonesia is likely to have no farmers left in 50 years. What will we eat?

The Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock is looking at encouraging famers in the Central Province to grow cocoa in the province and boost the local economy. 

With the increased demand for cocoa beans, Minister for Agriculture and Livestock, John Simon recently announced a proposed plan to establish a big nursery at Kuriva in Central province to allow local famers to get cocoa seedlings and plant cocoa on their land. 

“There is a big potential here at Central Province which is already growing good cocoa beans here at Kuriva.

A RESIDENT of Okahandja submitted a complaint with the Anti-Corruption Commission today calling for an investigation into alleged corrupt land deals implicating councillors and officials at the town.

Johannes Gaseb says he filed his complaint as an individual concerned about alleged corruption with regards to land sales and allocation at the town.

He wants the ACC to investigate land deals that took place between 2014 and 2020.

In this land news update from South Africa we focus on:

• Our changing Covid 19 context
• The unresolved problem of farm worker evictions
• Budget cuts and food insecurity
• Contestation over land administration in communal areas in KwaZulu-Natal province
• The need for a digital deeds registry platform
• Unresolved land restitution disputes
• The  complex backstory behind mounting land occupations in Cape Town
• A selection of land related news from Southern Central and Eastern Africa 

Binit Agrawal analyses the global impact of a Thai court judgement, which provides a judicial forum to farmers from Cambodia, who were victims of transnational land grabbing.

The Prey Lang Protected Area has lost more than 100,000 hectares of forest between 2000 and 2019, more than half of which became plantations, according to a report released August 10 by the NGO Jesuit Service Cambodia’s Ecology Program and the Cambodian Youth Network.

To determine forest loss and recovery over the nearly two decade period, the Technical Report on Forest-Cover Change Detection in the Prey Land Protected Area of Cambodia compared satellite images, which showed that 58,138 hectares of forest was converted into plantations and 43,188 hectares became “non-forest.”