Most francophone African states nationalised the colonial land tenure systems they inherited at Independence and then periodically adjusted them according to the situation in each country. Their citizens have yet to enjoy secure land rights, and there is still a yawning gap between the law and actual practice at both the lowest and highest levels.

Includes public lands, land monopolies, examples of total and partial state monopolies on land, ideas implicit in the state monopoly on land. Aims to clarify different conceptions of state-owned land so we can better assess their implications for land policies.

A study of Botswana’s Tribal Land Integrated Management System (TLIMS), which documented the land inventorying of customary land.

Provides brief summary of the 9 chapters of the full Report.

A wide-ranging examination of the history of the land question in Uganda, and diagnosis of land policy development, principles, and implementation. Suggests a number of concrete policy guidelines for a future national land policy.

This workshop brought together 75 practitioners from all over Africa. Professor Okoth-Ogendo, Professor of Public Law at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, gave a regional view of recent trends in East Africa, looking at land policy in East African history, trends in land policy development, and land policy changes in the 21st century.

Looks at criteria for assessing the bills, problems of definition, alienation of land, titling and management of village land, dispute settlement, and validation of villagisation.

Includes land reform: perpetuating patriarchal land policies?; Fast Track Land Reform: decentralisation or recentralisation?; women’s access to land in the land reform process; constraints faced by women in accessing land; who is pushing the agenda for better access to and utilisation of land for women?; conclusion: women beneficiaries of land reform; recommendations.

Includes a long history of land-related injustice; land and conflict in the colonial period: Mau Mau and land; land policies at independence; migration and settlement within Kenya; recent political violence and contested claims to land; conclusion.

Examines the evolution of the World Bank’s land policy since its 1975 Land Policy Reform Paper. Shows how the Bank has moved away from its earlier views on titling.

Examines the policies and practices on land of the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID). While DFID’s approach to land reform in the 1980s reflected the dictates of modernisation, formal registration and market-led distribution of land of the IFIs, this was followed 1997-2002 by a period where changes were made to move in the direction of a rights-based approach.

5 briefs analyse the roots of African land tenure systems, recent policy trends and the phenomenon of large scale land acquisitions. The briefs are: Customary Land Tenure in the Modern World; Putting 20th-Century Land Policies in Perspective; Land Reform in Africa: A Reappraisal; The Status of Customary Land Rights in Africa Today; The Global Land Rush: What this Means for Customary Land Rights.