Securing Africa's Land for Shared Prosperity : A Program to Scale Up Reforms and Investments

This is covers land administration and
reform in Sub-Saharan Africa, and is highly relevant to all
developing countries around the world. It provides simple
practical steps to turn the hugely controversial subject of
"land grabs" into a development opportunity by
improving land governance to reduce the risks of
dispossessing poor landholders while ensuring mutually
beneficial investors' deals. This book shows how Sub
Saharan Africa can leverage its abundant and highly valuable
natural resources to eradicate poverty by improving land
governance through a ten point program to scale up policy
reforms and investments at a cost of USD 4.5 billion. And
it`s points out formidable challenges to implementation
including high vulnerability to land grabbing and
expropriation with poor compensation as about 90 percent of
rural lands in Sub Saharan Africa are undocumented, but also
timely opportunities since high commodity prices and
investor interest in large scale agriculture have increased
land values and returns to investing in land administration.
It argues that success in implementation will require
participation of many players including Pan-African
organizations, Sub Saharan Africa governments, the private
sector, civil society and development partners; but that
ultimate success will depend on the political will of Sub
Saharan Africa governments to move forward with
comprehensive policy reforms and on concerted support by the
international development community.