Covers key policy recommendations from a recent study. How can small-scale agriculture be more employment intensive?; identifying potential for employment creation through land redistribution to small-scale farmers; key opportunities for employment creation; rethinking farm size; promoting flexible land tenure options; customising support services; building capacity; complementary policy reforms; key strategic choices and policy trade-offs.

Outlines how state and civil society-led legal empowerment initiatives can help secure land and resource rights;strengthen governance;improve access to legal systems and increase citizen participation in decision making.

A nine-minute video. Most rural people in Uganda have rights to their rural land through customary tenure arrangements;representing 75-80% of land holdings: but only 15-20% of the land is formally registered. Often women;especially widows;experience land grabbing;arbitrary eviction and poor access to justice. GLTN and others are working to help vulnerable smallholder farmers in South Western and Elgon regions through the implementation of a ‘Securing Land Tenure for Improved Food Security in select areas in Ugandaproject. The video illustrates some of this work.

CIFOR undertook a review of Kenya’s legal framework to understand whether legal provisions were sufficient to secure community land and forest rights. Asks how adequate Kenya’s legal framework was in protecting and promoting tenure rights of forest communities. The law appears to offer adequate security for the tenure rights of forest communities. Forests on communal land are secure;at least on paper. Areas of public gazetted forests claimed by indigenous groups as their customary territory are not well secured by law;but a task force is now addressing this gap.

The Key Messages on Sustaining Peace through Women’s Empowerment and Increased Access to Land and Property Rights in Fragile and Conflict-affected Contexts were intended to provide a reference on how to empower women and protect their housing;land and property rights in fragile and crisis affected contexts;and to set out why this is an essential element to sustain peace and stability. The publication includes a list of resources to further inform the development of related programmes and projects.

Executive summary of an AGTER report on land inequality. Includes why land inequality matters; land inequality – the shocking reality; hidden hands – the unseen hands of land inequality; solutions for effective change; a pathway to change.

A review of a book on land in Kenya published in 2020 by Boydell and Brewer Ltd. The reviewer offers a detailed analysis and discussion of the 8 chapters of this 224-page book. The chapters are entitled: introduction: what we talk about when we talk about land; land reform in Kenya: the history of an idea; making mischief: land in modern Kenya; land and constitutional change; the new institutional framework for land governance; land governance before the Supreme Court; rethinking historical land injustices; taking justice seriously.

Draws from a research report which responded to heightened concerns over rising conflict and antagonism between predominantly herding groups and more settled farming peoples across a wide band of semi-arid Africa. Many increasingly blame ‘farmer–herder conflict’;but neither recent history nor surveys of armed violence support this simplification. Pastoralism is seen as disruptive and backward;fighting an unwinnable battle for scarce resources. Yet in truth it is an under-valued adaptation to variability that can make livelihoods and landscapes more climate-resilient.

Chapter in a book;“Rethinking land reform in Africa;opportunities and challenges” by the African Natural Resources Centre;edited by Cosmas Milton Obote Ochieng for the African Development Bank. A think piece reflecting on changing commercial pressures on land in low and middle-income countries; the role of law in shaping the ways those pressures manifest themselves; the limits of business standards in driving systemic change; and the case for comprehensive law reform to secure rural land rights.

This commentary highlights the importance of land tenure security for women and indigenous peoples. Land titles are often used as a proxy for women’s land security;but focusing on titling alone does not lead to greater tenure security for women. To ensure tenure security;the development community;policymakers and practitioners must expand the range of interventions that address constraints women face when exercising their land rights.

A policy brief introducing a new book edited by Khwezi Mabasa and Bulelwa Mabasa. The book examines how land and agrarian reform impacts nation building;citizenship and identity formation. It draws attention to the limitations of reducing land to a commodity and how this approach perpetuates social conflict and inequality in land reform policy implementation. The brief argues that it is important to explore the contested meanings of land in society. These varied meanings challenge traditional land reform perspectives.

Aminata K Fabba is the Chairlady of the Malen Land Owners Association;(MALOA) and a frontline grassroots land rights defender in the southern provincial district of Pujehun. Describes her criticism of an unfair land agreement with SOCFIN details of which were not fully explained to the landholding families.