Better protection of property rights can affect several development outcomes, including better management of natural resources. This bibliography and rapid review is concerned with two principal outcomes:  reduction in investors risk and increase in incentives to invest, and improvements in household welfare.The literature search was completed both in academic journals and aggregator databases, specifically Google Scholar and Scopus, and the DFID database R4D.The outline of the Rapid Review on Property Rights paper:

Attempts to achieve "more for the poor" through the use of indicator targeting may in fact mean less for the poor. The efficient use of a fixed budget for poverty reduction may require targeting. However, the use of indicator targeting, using fixed characteristics that are correlated with poverty to determine the distribution of expenditures, will tend to reduce the budget. Ignoring the budget reducing effects can reduce the welfare of the poor as they receive a greater share of a shrinking budget.

This paper represents a provisional attempt to assess whether Zimbabwe’s land reform coherently addresses the issue of poverty reduction. It examines the short-term outcome(s) of the reform programme in relation to its initial objectives. More specifically, it examines its impact on farm-workers. The majority of farm workers lost jobs in the process as well as access to housing and social services such as health care and schools.

Based on worldwide experience and encouraging evidence from country pilots in African countries such as Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania,and Uganda, this new report suggests a series of ten steps that may help to revolutionise agricultural production and eradicate poverty in Africa. These steps include improving tenure security over individual and communal lands, increasing land access and tenure for poor and vulnerable families, resolving land disputes, managing better public land, and increasing efficiency and transparency in land administration services. 

Deforestation arising from conversion of forest areas into agriculture is a serious problem in Malawi. This paper discusses competition for agricultural land and investigates why the poor are closely associated with forests. Furthermore, the paper examines the effects of changes in crop land use on changes in forest cover. The author notes that the government of Malawi, like many others in sub-Saharan Africa, is currently faced with the problem of poverty. Moreover, being agricultural based most poverty reduction policies are streamlined along the agricultural sector.

This paper first introduces the concept of land redistribution of land through agrarian reform, that would allow for a more inclusive model of development. The author then demonstrates how land concentration leads to displacement (migration) of rural populations, and as a consequence increased pressure in urban centres.

The economy of post-apartheid South Africa continues to grow. Yet between 45 and 55 percent of the population remain in poverty. This inequality is most obvious in rural areas, where over 70 percent of poor people live. Policymakers are increasingly recognising the importance of rural land reform to poverty reduction.

Brief overview of the policy background to the land reform process in Mozambique, and a very generalised assessment of the extent to which this reform is improving the livelihoods of Mozambican rural people.The paper focuses on the experiences of the land component of Zambézia Agricultural Development Project (ZADP) . It looks at the extent to which the objective of the new land tenure policy in alleviating poverty has been realised and have concentrated on the contextual, practical and conceptual challenges that have faced a provincial programme of land tenure reform.

Recent years have seen pastoralist communities in Tanzania becoming increasingly impoverished and vulnerable, due to  livestock diseases, drought, fluctuating market prices and unfavourable policies. This paper discusses strategies to address the last of these factors with reference to the Ereto-Ngorongoro Pastoralist Project, which was set up in response to growing concern about the unprecedented and rising levels of poverty among pastoralists in Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA).

Secure land rights are important for development and poverty reduction and the greatest challenges for providing such rights are in urban, peri-urban areas, and the most productive rural areas. This publication updates and revises UN-HABITAT’s 2004 publication ‘Urban Land for All’, and stresses the need for policies that facilitate access to land for all sections of their existing and future populations – particularly those on low or irregular incomes.

A new Land Act introduced in Angola in 2004 demonstrates a genuine interest in the protection of the customary land rights of rural communities and underlines rural communities’ rights to their land. However, the documentation of customary rights in Angolan agriculture is limited. This report describes and analyses customary land rights in two villages in Huambo province, both situated some 60 to 90 km from the provincial capital. The report demonstrates that despite of many similarities there exist huge differences in agricultural practices and in how customary land rights are conceived.