Effective reform pathways for addressing women’s access to land and tenure security in Africa are yet to be found despite their role in feeding the population. With the adoption of the AU Declaration on Land Issues and Challenges in Africa (2009) and the launch of the African Land Policy Centre (2017), hopes were high that existing precarious women’s access to land, tenure and food security might be transformed to opportunities. Prevailing discourses, however, still advocate for land reforms attuned to gender equality with a neo-classical chord.

In Zambia, security of tenure for communities residing under customary land tenure settings has in recent years increasingly come under threat owing to the pressures of high rate of urbanization, speculation, subdivision and conversion to state land, which effectively excludes marginal populations from accessing resources for their land. While customary land is a major resource for most Zambians, the inadequacy or total lack of documentation leads to tenure insecurity, making people susceptible to forced displacements, and frequent land disputes.

Rural women’s livelihoods in Africa are dependent on their rights and entitlement to land as well as security of tenure. Equally important is how land laws and land governance systems shape and reshape women’s access to land and tenure security. As such, this paper focuses on women’s access to land and tenure security after the adoption of a new Constitution in 2013 and Statutory Instrument 53 of 2014 in Zimbabwe. Whereas both legal instruments are progressive and guarantee women’s rights to property, their realization is shrouded in complexities and contradictions.

This study focuses on land fragmentation in Ethiopia, exploring its impact on agricultural productivity and rural development. It proposes strategies for addressing fragmentation through land consolidation. The study employs a robust methodology, including data collection and analysis of  data, along with a meta-analysis of existing reports and studies on land fragmentation. Through these analytical approaches, the study aims to provide empirical evidence supporting the effectiveness of land consolidation strategies in Ethiopia.

Climate change affects everyone. Yet it hits the poor hardest, especially women and children, and those without rights to land.

Landlessness and the lack of secure land tenure amplify the vulnerability of rural poor communities to the impacts of climate change. Yet, the challenges surrounding their lack of land access and insecure tenure rights are often overlooked in climate change discussions, policy-making, and program implementation.

This report is a contribution to ILRI's RECONCILE project Livestock, Climate and System Resilience (LCSR), a research program that aims to improve participatory rangeland management (PRM) uptake by establishing a stronger technical base. The three-year project builds on the gains and lessons learned in the implementation of PRM in Baringo implemented under similar collaborative arrangements and promoted PRM both as a concept for rangelands management and restoration and as a process that promotes sustainable land use, policy and governance of rangelands and pastoral livelihoods systems.

On Earth, land is the most vital resource from which living things derive their essential necessities. There are many methods for managing and maintaining this vital resource in a sustainable manner, but it is more important to first understand the root cause of malfunctioning land management strategies. This chapter aims at understanding the underlying causes of socio-economic and policy-related factors affecting the sustainability of land tenure systems in Ethiopia.

Within discussions of land and resource rights, there is growing attention to women’s rights, mostly in terms of household and individual rights to private property. This leaves unanswered questions about whether and how women’s land rights can be secured under collective tenure, upon which billions of people worldwide depend. There is an important gap in conceptual tools, empirical understanding, and policy recommendations on women’s land rights within collective tenure.

A substantial body of research on these important issues comes from a research theme of the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) that focused on the governance of natural resources (Flagship 5, or PIM5). Research in Flagship 5 examined the policy and institutional foundations for improved natural resource management. It analyzed how tenure security affects sustain¬able management and how individuals, groups, and communities govern the land, water, fish stocks, and forests.

Land tenure, or access and rights to land, is essential to sustain people’s livelihoods. This paper looks at how farm households perceive land tenure (in)security in relation to food (in)security, and how these perceptions evolve throughout different policy periods in Laos. The paper highlights the centrality of farmers’ strategies in configuring the dynamic relationships between tenure (in)security and food (in)security, by demonstrating how farmers’ perceived and de facto land tenure insecurity shapes their decisions to diversify livelihood options to ensure food security.

Legal frameworks for communal land rights in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania are now gaining momentum. Questions can be raised as to whether, how, and to what extent these frameworks take into account the disadvantages of formalising tenure and the complexities of pastoral resources. In this paper, we consider the impact of these challenges on the formalisation of communal ownership, beginning with an overview of how commons theory has influenced land governance policies and how it is applied to pastoral systems.