Topics and Regions
Rick has over 40 years experience working in the land sector in Southern Africa. He is part of the Land Portal knowledge engagement team working to research and develop knowledge resources including data stories, blogs and in-depth country profiles for Southern, Central and Eastern Africa.
Rick is also a Senior Research Associate with Phuhlisani NPC - a South African land sector NGO and the curator of specialist Southern African land news and analysis website https://knowledgebase.land
He tweets on land related issues Twitter account https://twitter.com/KnowledgebaseL
He has a PhD from the University of Cape Town. His research in Langa, Cape Town features as the central case study in a recent book Urban Planning in the Global South (2018), co-authored with the late Vanessa Watson, which examines the on-going contestations over land and housing in the rapidly growing cities of the global South.
Details
Location
Climate Change and Agrarian Justice Conference
International Online Conference on Climate Change and Agrarian Justice – with IDS Fellow Ian Scoones. 26-29 September 2022
Scratching the surface
The trade in coloured gemstones stretches around the world, linking source countries on almost every continent to international trade hubs, mainly in Asia, and on to retail markets. Mozambique is one such source, sitting atop significant gemstone deposits, including precious and semi-precious stones.
South African Land Conference on The Failed Promise of Tenure Security: Customary Land Rights and Dispossession: The last word
Citizens of rural communities across the country who are fighting for their land rights are outraged at the government’s treatment of them, likening it to apartheid and colonialism.
Violence, intimidation, assassinations and dispossession are continuing in parts of the country as black South Africans struggle to defend their land rights against moves by the government, often in cahoots with traditional leaders and private companies.
South Africa
Exporting copper from Zambia — a tale of two roads
Copper remains Zambia’s principal export and tax earner. But getting the product out is subject to challenges of both hardware and software.
The towns on the road to Mongu are memorable for their roadside stalls and shiny tomatoes, throngs of people in brightly coloured chitenge, and the quaintly named shops. (Photo: Greg Mills)
The Just Transition Open Agenda
From 24 to 26 November 2020, the three organisations comprising the Life After Coal campaign, Earthlife Africa (Johannesburg), the Centre for Environmental Rights and groundWork, met virtually to develop a shared Open Agenda on the Just Transition. We used the Open Agenda for a Just Transition - developed at the National Coal Exchange in Middelburg, Mpumalanga, in July 2019 - as a starting point. We chose to frame it as an agenda because it consists of actions that need to be taken to ensure a Just Transition.