Ghana is urbanising rapidly, and over half of the country’s population have lived in urban areas since 2010.

Land tenure security, especially customary residence systems, is found to influence the agricultural investment decision-making and productivity of smallholder farmers across sub-Saharan Africa. However, as country-specific customary residence systems and farming models evolve over time, their impact on food security and livelihood remains unclear.

After more than ten years of hectic debates on international ‘land grabs’, academic interest in collapsed land deals or projects with unexpected results is growing. According to the Land Matrix, Tanzania is one of the target countries for such deals, with a number ‘abandoned’ or delayed and projects whose status is unknown.

Conservation Agriculture (CA) is advocated as an agricultural innovation that will improve smallholder famer resilience to future climate change. Under the conditions presented by the El Niño event of 2015/16, the implementation of CA was examined in southern Malawi at household, district and national institutional levels.

The “Responsible Governance of Investments in Land” (RGIL) project in Uganda fosters investment quality promotion to ensure that agriculture and forestry investments in land are productive, contribute to sustainable land management and respect the rights and needs of local populations, including vulnerable groups and women.

Despite an inflow of investment in rural communities, there are concerns about negative impacts on local people’s livelihoods, access to farming land, productivity, income levels, food security and access to social services.

Knowledge of policies on land governance not only improves the way issues pertaining to land rights are handled; but also minimises waste of time and money lost on land conflict.

Responsible Land Policy in Uganda (RELAPU) is a project implemented by the German International Cooperation (GIZ) and financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). BMZ created the Special Initiative “One World, No Hunger”, aimed at eradicating extreme hunger and poverty.