Often, approaches to investment-related land rights violations are reactive, rather than proactive and preventative: legal support is usually provided after communities have been negatively impacted, displaced or evicted — and after lives have been lost, property destroyed, local waters and soils polluted, and communities devastated. In such cases, legal support has a limited chance of reversing the damage caused.

Assessment Of Urban Land Governance For Sustainable Governance In Ethiopia

This list of bibliographic references is an accompanying piece to the data story written by Rick de Satgé and published by the Land Portal on 28 April 2022.

This is the PDF version of an online data story published by Land Portal on 28 April 2022.

Colonial and apartheid land dispossession in South Africa was the most extensive of any country in sub-saharan Africa. Despite a land reform programme initiated after the transition to democracy in 1994, equitable access to land remains an unresolved question in both urban and rural areas.

Context and backgroundColonial legacy and the continuous implementation of neoliberal policies have led to the creation of institutional pluralism in the planning of customary land in peri-urban areas in Ghana. During land commoditisation, peri-urban customary land planning regularly involves physical planning authorities, traditional authorities, and private surveyors. The community members are rarely involved in the planning of their communities, and the planning often leads to the eviction of the community members from their ancestral land.

Offers a short history since thousands of Ugandans fled their homes back in 2011. A grim history with evictions continuing;a company becoming more powerful and continuing arrest of land defenders on trumped-up charges.

Gives details of how villagers in Chilonga in Zimbabwe’s Masvingo province are being kicked off their land;paving the way for growing lucerne grass as stockfeed. Cites some individual case histories;government support to the giant dairy company Dendairy and attempts to resist the evictions.

With the pandemic striking higher in Uganda;poor families continue to be forced off their land by their government and investors despite several directives halting evictions during the COVID period. Cites a number of examples. In the latest looming evictions;the Uganda government is evicting more than 35,000 artisanal miners in the Kisita mines in Kassanda district.

For the estimated 70% of the world population that lives on property without a formal land title, life can be precarious. The absence of ownership documentation raises families’ vulnerability to forced eviction and conflict; it precludes the use of the property to access financial services and other economic benefits; and it diminishes the value of property by restricting its transfer to an informal, opaque market. And yet, in many parts of the world, the process of obtaining a land title is not only expensive but also complicated and sometimes nearly impossible.

In Uganda land remains the most sought–after natural resource;but legal and structural mechanisms have not been effective in addressing illegal land evictions faced by vulnerable communities. Most local investors have taken advantage of the structural gaps in land administration which have exacerbated the issuance of multiple titles. This has been compounded by Uganda’s weak justice system and excesses perpetrated by some police officers and the military. In recent times Uganda has witnessed catastrophic forced evictions across the country.

Both land expropriation and eviction constitute a threat to the properties and life of local communities. In Southern Cameroon, the phenomenon has increased with the implementation of structural projects to ensure the emergence of Cameroon by 2035 and the resumption of the control of urban space by the State. The aim of this article is to show how structural projects and the regulation of urbanization in big towns affect local communities.