The mandate of the Kenya Government in its objective to achieve sustainable development is to reduce poverty by half by 2015 and transform the country into a newly industrailized nation by the year 2020. This paper reviews the cadastral systems that have been formulated and implemented in Kenya ; the different concepts and techniques used in the preparation of cadastral survey plans and maps; and the impact of the cadastre as a source of spatial data in support of land administration processes.

In Timor-Leste, customary institutions contribute to sustainable and equitable rural development and the establishment of improved access to and management of land, water and other natural resources. Drawing on multi-sited empirical research, we argue that the recognition and valorization of custom and common property management is a prerequisite for sustainable and equitable land tenure reform in Timor-Leste.

The oil palm boom in Southeast Asia has increased demand for institutional arrangements facilitating large-scale plantation development on customary lands. A financial model of an oil palm plantation in Sarawak, Malaysia, is used to explore six project types, including managed smallholders, three different joint-venture arrangements, renting, and (for comparison) a private plantation on state land. Benefit-cost analysis is used as basis for project, private (shareholder), and stakeholder analyses.

This publication outlines the process undertaken by UN Habitat/GLTN and The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Representation in Kenya to support the Ministry of Lands, Physical Planning and Urban Areas Management of the Turkana County Government-Kenya, in establishing a county Land Information Management System based on the Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM). The project was carried out in the context of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) program entitled, Support for Responsible Land and Natural Resource Governance of Communal Lands in Kenya.

The Rural Agricultural Livelihood Survey (RALS) is a new panel survey designed to obtain a comprehensive picture of Zambia’s small- and medium-scale farming sector using the 2010 census sampling frame. An earlier household panel survey for rural Zambia was the Supplemental Surveys (SS) of 2001, 2004 and 2008, which enabled the publication of a large set of important research outputs by IAPRI, Michigan State University and a range of Zambian and international partner organizations.

In the context of the global land rush, some portray large-scale land acquisitions as a potent threat to the livelihoods of already marginalized rural farming households in Africa. In order to avoid the potential pitfall of studying a particular project that may well have atypical effects, this paper systematically investigates the impact on commercial farm wage incomes for rural smallholder households of all pledged investments in the agricultural sector in Zambia between 1994 and 2007.

We use nationally representative survey data from two neighboring countries in Southern Africa – Zambia and Malawi – to characterize the current status of rural land rental market participation by smallholder farmers. We find that rural rental market participation is strongly conditioned by land scarcity, and thus is more advanced in Malawi than in lower-density Zambia. In both countries, we find evidence that rental markets contribute to efficiency gains within the smallholder sector by facilitating the transfer of land from less-able to more-able producers.

In the name of development, governments in southern Africa are reformulating land policies to facilitate privatisation of customary land rights. It is argued that this can stimulate land markets, (foreign) private investment, access to formal credit, and enhance security of tenure (by way of holding title), thereby leading to economic growth and poverty alleviation.

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The purpose of the research is to: 1) investigate the interpretation of the sections in the Lands Act of 1995 that provide for the statutory recognition on one hand, and conversion of customary land, on the other; and 2) discuss the effects of the said sections on customary landholders. Methodologically, qualitative methods (largely in-depth interviews) were used to conclude that governments in sub-Sahara Africa are the architects of tenure insecurity because they (knowingly or otherwise) enact laws that are contradictory or conflicting in nature.

In their quest for economic development through increased private investment, many developing countries are reformulating land policies to pave way for the transformation of communal land rights into private property. However, these customary land reform efforts have often been frustrated by indigenous people who feel such proposals threaten rural livelihoods and undermine the traditional political structures. Most of the research on this subject has focused on whether, how and/or to what extent the objectives of land reforms (e.g.

This paper explores the politics of ‘customary’ land tenure, land reform, and traditional leaders in Zambia. In Zambia, as elsewhere in Southern Africa, the government at the behest of donors has implemented market-based tenure reform legislation. This legislation aims to improve the security of land tenure and to promote development through investment. The paper shows how complex, indeterminate, and contentious this tenure reform has been on the ground – particularly in relation to the 94 per cent of Zambian land that is held in ‘customary’ tenure.