Resource information
March 2014 – In most of Africa, land is at the heart of economic, social and political life. Therefore, land and natural resource rights and governance issues profoundly affect and are affected by development initiatives across the continent. To fully succeed and contribute to ending extreme poverty in the post-2015 world, development initiatives must recognize and strengthen the land and natural resource rights of local people, especially the rural poor and women. However, while there is growing awareness of these issues, they are often overlooked. Some within the development community consider land rights too politically sensitive to address. Others may lack the knowledge and expertise to strengthen tenure security in the course of development. Focus on Land in Africa (FOLA) is an on-line educational resource designed to help meet these challenges by providing information on land and natural resource rights to non-tenure specialists within the development community. This paper shares successes and challenges in in communicating about complex property rights issues with a non-technical development audience. This Paper was prepared for presentation at the “2014 World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty” in Washington DC, March 24-27. Authored by Bee Wuethrich, Peter Veit and Reem Gaafar.
