A study of Botswana’s Tribal Land Integrated Management System (TLIMS), which documented the land inventorying of customary land.

This workshop brought together 75 practitioners from all over Africa. Professor Okoth-Ogendo, Professor of Public Law at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, gave a regional view of recent trends in East Africa, looking at land policy in East African history, trends in land policy development, and land policy changes in the 21st century.

What can an analysis of power in local communities contribute to debates on women’s legal empowerment and the role of paralegals in Africa? Drawing upon theories of power and rights, and research on legal empowerment in African plural legal systems, this article explores the challenges for paralegals in facilitating women’s access to justice in Tanzania, which gave statutory recognition to paralegals in the Legal Aid Act 2017. Land conflicts represent the single-biggest source of local legal disputes in Tanzania and are often embedded in gendered land tenure relations.

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.

Discusses two agricultural investments in Zambia. Both projects started as state-led, development-oriented initiatives in the 1970s and early 1980s, and were later privatised. This long implementation history provides an opportunity to assess the longer-term socio-economic outcomes of agricultural investments, and to distil insights on practical ways to include lower-income groups in investment processes. Includes national context, design and implementation of the investment projects, and socio-economic outcomes.

Training volunteers to help their communities defend their land rights has proved an effective approach for promoting land justice in Tanzania. Report documents how Hakiardhi, a Dar-es-Salaam based research institute working on land governance issues, has established and trained a 600-strong network of male and female ‘Land Rights Monitors’ (LRMs) operating in 300 villages on various aspects of the land law, so they can help people and local governments to exercise and ensure respect for their legal rights in land disputes, particularly in relation to large-scale agricultural investments.

Despite growing research on land deals in Ethiopia, there is still uncertainty on the real scale and features of the phenomenon, and some misperceptions continue to shape public debates. Report discusses the findings of a systematic inventory of land deals for agricultural investment in Ethiopia. It describes the scale, geography, drivers and key features of large-scale deals. It also discusses findings relating to the early outcomes of the deals.

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.

Highlights the key drivers of pressure in Ghana on rural land and their communities, such as population growth, urbanisation and acquisition of land by new actors, including government and business. Draws on case study evidence from two communities: the Ahanta West District near Sekondi-Takoradi in the south, and the Savelugu-Nanton Municipal Authority around Tamale in the north.

In sub-Saharan Africa the pace and scale at which land is changing hands are increasing fast. Summarises findings from a research project – including case studies in Ghana, Senegal, Mozambique, and Uganda – to improve understanding of these changes by addressing 3 main questions: How is land access changing in rural Africa, and what are the major drivers of change? How are these changes affecting rural livelihoods? What are the implications of these changes for development policy and practice?

Primary aim is to provide a backdrop on relevant policies and practice, and to inform practitioners, policy makers and researchers about key governance issues relevant to the strengthening of women’s empowerment in community land stewardship and accountability in agricultural investments. Conducted in April 2016 on selected communities in Tana River County, providing an in-depth case study of the application of statutory and customary laws affecting women’s access to and management of land. Concludes that implementation of gender equality provisions has been weak overall.

Examines research in 4 semi-arid areas: Diourbel Region (Senegal), Maradi Department (Niger), the Kano hinterland (northern Nigeria) and Makueni District (Kenya). Presentation of main results of the research, presentation by country coordinators on farmer investments, plenary discussions, reports of working groups, concluding plenary. The foci include livelihood transformations, the impact of population growth, access to land and markets, how to initiate and sustain participatory debates on national policy formulation.