Critical reflections on the concepts, issues and methods that are important for integrating a gender perspective into mainstream research and policy-making on land and agricultural commercialisation in Africa. Informed by case studies in Kenya, Ghana and Zambia. Compares key gender issues that arise across plantation, contract farming and small- and medium-scale commercial farming. Discusses how concepts and research methods derived from the literature may be applied to mainstream research. Highlights the need for an integrated approach to researching gender and agrarian change in Africa.

One of the new government’s major policy priorities has to be to get agriculture moving as a motor of growth. The long-running issue of outstanding compensation payments has meant that international donors and financiers have not engaged with land reform areas, missing out on supporting major development opportunities. People on the resettlement farms are producing significant quantities of food and other agricultural products. Recent figures make it clear how vital they are to Zimbabwe’s struggling economy. So quick resolution of the compensation issue is essential.

Recent years have seen a new wave of large-scale acquisitions of farmland for plantation agriculture in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Less tangible changes are also taking place. In a globalised world, land governance is increasingly shaped by international law, developments in which law are shifting the balance between competing land claims and between private interests and public authority. International developments are also creating new spaces for contestation and accountability.

Drawing on 18 years of research, offers these 10 priorities for getting agriculture moving again: land tenure, finance, partnerships, government loans, access to marketing, value addition, smart support systems, irrigation, mechanisation, local economic development.

Asks are people better off in the new resettlements, a decade after they had moved, compared to the communal areas? To probe this question in more depth, in 2012 Blasio Mavedzenge, Felix Murimbarimba and Jacob Mahenehene and Ian Scoones undertook a survey in some nearby communal areas in parallel with the resurvey of the land reform sites. A complex story emerges in these 5 blogs showing that the resettlements are not simply an extension of the communal lands, but are different on a variety of fronts, with important implications for the future.

On the basis of work in Masvingo Province since 2000, and as part of an ongoing regional project on Livelihoods after Land Reform in Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe, offers challenges to 5 oft-repeated myths, that: Zimbabwean land reform has been a total failure; the beneficiaries of Zimbabwean land reform have been largely political ‘cronies’; there is no investment in the new resettlements; agriculture is in complete ruins; the rural economy has collapsed.

In Mozambique, changes in land access and use are shaping new landscapes, often at the expense of the poor. Despite progressive land legislation, elite groups and vested interests are consolidating land holdings while peasant producers are being dispossessed of their land and access to fertile plots is becoming increasingly difficult. As national and foreign investors seek land for housing, real estate, agriculture, tourism, mining and forestry, what is the state’s role in responding to these increased demands?

Large-scale agricultural investments impact upon men and women in different ways, yet women’s voices and interests are not always heard in decisions about land.

Recent actual and expected changes in global agricultural commodity prices have fostered a renewed business interest in tropical agriculture. Agricultural commercialisation concessions (ACCs) are contracts between governments and agribusiness companies allowing the company to supply inputs, purchase farm produce and also sometimes run processing operations and/or provide storage, marketing and distribution services in a given geographical area.

Explores how global standards and guidelines contribute to gender equality and women’s empowerment, and whether more can be done through these instruments to improve the situation of women in agriculture. Includes lessons from the field.

Over the last two decades, 200 million people across the world have been lifted out of hunger. But as climate change brings more frequent and severe weather shocks such as droughts and floods, and makes rainfall patterns less predictable, these gains are under threat, especially among Africa’s smallholder farmers. Agriculture is Africa’s biggest employer. But mean temperatures are expected to rise faster in the continent than the global average, decreasing crop yields and deepening poverty.

Includes regional context, history of land tenure in Angola, the 1992 land law and its implementation, the draft Land Act of 2002 and its approval, review of post conflict potential fracture points – resettlement of IDPs and refugees, land grabbing, peri-urban land, food security and revival of agriculture, and prerequisites for a new policy.