Women for Women International has worked with over 84,000 marginalised women in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo and commissioned research to explore these women’s land rights. The study found that the women could not own land, even through inheritance, while men controlled the sales of the items that their wives farmed.

The Netherlands Land Academy (LANDac), the Food & Business Knowledge Platform, CIFOR and Shared Value Foundation (SVF) jointly set out in 2017 to design and implement 3 multi-stakeholder Learning Platforms around investment hubs in Mozambique (the Beira Corridor), Tanzania (Kilombero Valley) and Uganda (the Jinja-Kampala Corridor). Land-based investments have shown that deals often lead to conflicts between investors and local populations, which negatively effects local livelihoods and food security.

A series of submissions by the Zambia Land Alliance on these topics: land as a right; women’s rights to land; vestment and administration of land; conversion of customary land to leasehold tenure; land and the environment; land information; mode of adoption of the Constitution.

Gives an overview on how to consider gender aspects in projects and programmes addressing land rights. Covers land policy, land legislation, implementation of land laws, enforcement, land administration, example of indicators.

Contains a brief review of the land issue in DRC; women’s access to land: secondary land rights; the place guaranteed to women in initiatives to reform the land system; conclusions and recommendations. Women’s access to land must be placed within the context of the complex and pluralistic land crisis and bloody conflicts that continue to destabilise that part of the DRC. Essential resources, such as credit, quality seeds, technology, information and access to markets are cruelly lacking.

Indigenous and community lands, crucial for rural livelihoods, are typically held under informal customary arrangements. This can leave the land vulnerable to outside commercial interests, so communities may seek to formalize their land rights in a government registry and obtain an official land document. But this process is often time-consuming, complex and costly and, in contrast, companies can acquire land relatively quickly and find short-cuts around regulatory burdens.

A response to the Zambian Government’s August 2002 decision to consult major stakeholders on land. Zambian Land Alliance helped form Civil Society Land Policy Review Committee which aims to ensure that the remote rural poor participate in the Government Draft Land Policy review process and present their views. Paper is an initial submission on the Draft Land Policy and makes recommendations on 5 areas: vestment of land, gender, land tenure security, land administration, and land disputes resolution.

Includes methodology and research sites; land, the law and women’s rights in Uganda; women’s rights – lost in the land rush; economic policy and land as a commodity; women’s rights activists – promoting women’s land rights; recommendations. Uganda’s eco-feminist movement is one of several working at the interface of environmental degradation, corporate human rights abuses and patriarchy, urgently building women’s campaigning and resistance skills.

The Kilimanjaro Initiative is a rural women’s mobilisation from across Africa towards an iconic moment at the foot of Mt Kilimanjaro in October 2016. Objectives include raising awareness on existing frameworks and safeguards around large scale land based initiatives and demand for their application in securing legitimate tenure rights of rural women in Africa. Presents a charter of demands and recommendations.

GRAIN has documented at least 135 farmland deals for food crop production that have backfired between 2007 and 2017. They represent 17.5 million hectares. These are not failed land grabs, since the land almost never goes back to the communities, but failed agribusiness projects. While higher standards of due diligence and stronger forms of liability are surely needed, the real challenge is to get the land back to the communities. No one should rest until that is achieved.

Examines policy and legal reforms in the 1990s; strengths of the 1995 Lands Act and civil society concerns about it; policy framework; Lands Tribunal; women’s constraints in customary land, alienation of land, inheritance and accessing urban land, government attempts to promote women’s access and control over land; conclusions and future challenges.

Contains the common goal, delivery challenges, six stories and takeaways, frontiers for further investigation and innovation.