Includes colonial rule and land frontiers, late colonialism and modernisation, post-colonial nation-building and state-led development, community participation and community-based solutions, harmonising and devolving land administration, women’s land rights, pastoral land rights, market-led land redistribution in Southern Africa, foreign direct investment in land.

Includes current trends � levels of activity, crops and markets, sources of investment, contract transparency, geographical distribution; focus of existing discourse; land and security; weaving land into conflict narratives; risks; conclusion. Argues that access to accurate information about the extent and nature of large-scale foreign investment in Ethiopian and Sudanese land is extremely limited, so broader narratives of ‘land grabbing’ are a potentially misleading oversimplification.

An independent newsletter providing details of current developments in land reform and land conflicts in the Horn, East and Central Africa. Covers Burundi, Eastern DRC, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan (including origins of the Darfur crisis), Tanzania and Uganda. As in Southern Africa, land is a highly contested and contentious issue right across the region. A short case study in Apac, Northern Uganda, symbolises the dilemmas of land reforms across the continent in an era of privatisation. Some are very clearly gaining at the expense of others.

Includes land forum to debate tough issues, land law and land rights, resuming community delimitation, Lioma, Niassa, exaggerated plans fuelled by secrecy and speculation, poor consultations mean communities lose out, biofuel expansion slower than expected, hundreds of land conflicts, resettlement badly done, the Chinese land grab myth.

Contains topic and rationale, research methods, socio-economic context and biofuels initiatives, policy and legal framework for biofuels production, reconciling competing resource uses, community consultations and community-investor partnerships. Concludes that the design and implementation of policy tools is riddled with difficulties. The inability to enforce progressive legislation results in threats to community rights. The effectiveness of community consultations is questionable, as is the claim that biofuels can be commercially grown on marginal land.

In Liberia it is estimated that around half the country’s land mass has been promised to foreign companies and investors. From 2009-11 the Sustainable Development Institute and NAMATI embarked on an action research project to support rural communities to protect, document, and manage their customary lands and natural resources. Drawing from lessons learned in the field, they sought to bring the voices and realities from rural Liberia to influential policymakers.

Pastoral and agro-pastoral areas in eastern Africa and elsewhere have long been regarded as peripheries in economic terms and in terms of social and cultural accomplishments. Although biased perceptions of the ‘unproductive’ uses of pastoralism have become outdated, government policies still do little to formally recognise or integrate pastoral lands as critical parts of rural livelihood systems and economic development models.

5 chapters: introduction; features, triggers, and drivers of the global rush for land; impacts; factors shaping the land rush; conclusions and policy considerations. Africa is the prime target, the best land is often being targeted for acquisition, national elites are playing a major role, the rural poor are frequently being dispossessed, compensation for resource loss is rarely adequate, women are particularly vulnerable.

Includes land reform: perpetuating patriarchal land policies?; Fast Track Land Reform: decentralisation or recentralisation?; women’s access to land in the land reform process; constraints faced by women in accessing land; who is pushing the agenda for better access to and utilisation of land for women?; conclusion: women beneficiaries of land reform; recommendations.

An independent newsletter providing news of new developments in land reform in Southern Africa in 2003-4. Covers Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

The author formerly worked for the regional organisation ZERO. This regional survey covers a number of sustainable development issues and future challenges for Southern Africa.

A wide-ranging valedictory lecture by the veteran radical land guru. Offers glimpses of the role of law in Tanzania’s jump from the frying pan of state nationalism into the fire of corporate neoliberalism. Argues that the creation of ‘free’ labour and of land as capital were central to the colonial project. Examines the changing status of customary titles and the series of Land Acts from 1999. Argues that De Soto’s current Mkurabita project will in effect mean registering large chunks of village land in preparation for their alienation through force, fraud, and corruption.