News on Land

COLOMBO (IDN) — As land forgery continues unabated in Sri Lanka, something has to be done to prevent the prevalent rate of land fraud, with legal owners and innocent buyers unknowingly falling into these traps.

According to news sources, the Registrar General N C Withanage had said, as far back as March 2019, that 40 to 50 per cent of land deeds in Sri Lanka are forged documents.

But unfortunately, things continue to go from bad to worse.

Uganda: On Feb. 28, President Yoweri Museveni wrote a letter addressing it to Robinah Nabbanja, the Prime Minister. The letter directed her to halt land evictions across Uganda. Museveni said he was using his powers under Article 98(1) and 99(1) of the Constitution that enjoins him to ensure good governance and protect the Constitution, President Museveni directed as follows:

Drought is a global problem that affects an estimated 1.5 billion people, particularly those in the Southern Hemisphere. Between the 1970s and the early 2000s the percentage of the earth’s landmass affected by severe drought has more than doubled.

Tropical Cyclone Gombe has killed at least 53 people since it hit Mozambique a week ago, a sharp rise from earlier estimates.

According to the National Institute of Disaster Management (INGC) on Thursday, another 80 people have been injured and 400,000 affected since the cyclone swept into northern and central areas of the country, flooding towns and destroying houses.

The initial death toll in the southern African country was estimated at seven.

Main photo source: China's Ministry of Finance

China’s local authorities saw their income from land sales contract almost 30% in the first two months of the year, showing how the continued housing slump is directly hurting government finances.

In Namibia the Affirmative Repositioning Movement’s chief activist, Job Amupanda, has urged members of parliament to do something useful for their people by passing a bill prohibiting foreign nationals from owning land in Namibia.

Amupanda made this plea on Tuesday when he and his delegation met members of the parliamentary standing committee on natural resources at the National Assembly. 

“Who will remember 100 of you (MPs) who have done something significant in dealing with this problem of foreigners owning our land?” Amupanda asked. 

Kinandu village residents in southern Democratic Republic of Congo are taking part in a reforestation initiative in the miombo woodlands while land grabs are simultaneously on the rise.

To scale back large land grabs in the country, the Minister of Lands, Housing and Urban Development Judith Nabakooba has ordered resident district commissioners (RDCs) to routinely monitor, inspect and report every month land acquired by large land investors to ensure that land they acquire is not occupied by tenants or customary landowners.

She urged RDCs and the district security committees to heed President Yoweri Museveni’s recent directive stopping land evictions across the country.

Nigeria has had a series of policies directed towards improving food supply at affordable prices. Policies have kept coming since the 1960s, including the National Accelerated Food Production Programme of 1972 and the most recent – the National Agricultural

As the escalating climate crisis threatens access to water for millions across Africa, Drying Out African Lands: Expansion of Large-Scale Agriculture Threatens Access to Water in Africa unveils the devastating impact of large-scale agricultural plantations on the right to water on the continent.

Urban displacements greatly diminish the living conditions of already desperate populations living on the brink of poverty.

On 15 November, Minoo Kyaa, a community activist from Mukuru kwa Njenga, South Nairobi, tweeted,

We keep asking each other “we unaenda wapi?” [Where are you going?] and even tho it isn’t funny we laugh about it and stare at each other in disbelief.