A court in northern Vietnam’s Hoa Binh province on Wednesday sentenced land-rights activist Can Thi Theu and her son Trinh Ba Tu to eight years in prison each for posting online articles and livestream videos criticizing the government for its handling of a deadly land-rights clash last year.

The eight-year terms for the pair, who worked to raise awareness of the socially and politically explosive issue of land grabs in the country of 95 million people, will be followed by three years each on probation, the court’s judgment said.

Medici Land Governance (MLG) has partnered with the Government of Rwanda to pilot a project that aims to make land transfers a paperless process. For the pilot, MLG has built a land transaction platform on blockchain called Ubutaka, which will be integrated with Rwanda’s existing land registry infrastructure.

The Ethiopian Shipping and Logistics Services announced it has finalized preparations to construct a new dry port at Kombolcha with an estimated cost of 1.5 billion Birr.

The Shipping Enterprise has been undertaking a feasibility study to relocate its existing dry port in Kombolcha town, which has been active for over a decade and build a new one that is adjacent Kombolcha Industry Park and the railway line that crosses the town.

Current estimates of land-use change may be capturing only one-quarter of its true extent across the world, new research shows.

The Public Enterprises Holding and Administration Agency (PEHAA) accused the Benishangul-Gumz and Gambela regions of illegal land distribution.

According to the Agency, the land distributed by the regions was the property of the Development Bank of Ethiopia (DBE) which took it from agricultural investors who failed to repay their credit and have since been unaccounted for.

The Agency’s finance director, Sewagegn Chane, told The Reporter that more than 158 rain-fed agriculture projects have been returned to the bank.

Responsible Land-Based Investment Navigator (RLBI) 2.0 Provides Expanded Access to Resources and Information on Land Investments

• Botum Sakor National Park in southern Cambodia has lost at least 30,000 hectares of forest over the past three decades.
• Decades of environmental degradation go back to the late 1990s when the Cambodian government began handing out economic land concessions for the development of commercial plantations and tourist infrastructure.
• NGOs in Cambodia are said to be unwilling to speak out against the destruction of Botum Sakor because they are afraid they will not be allowed to operate in the country if they do.