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The objective of the research that this policy brief reports on is to analyse different mechanisms of access to land for the rural poor in an era when redistribution through expropriative land reform is largely inconsistent with the forces of political economy. The roads of access to land which are explored are intra-family transfers, access through community membership, land sales and rental markets, and government programmes including decollectivisation and land-market assisted land reform. The array of instruments is vast, and each can be subsidised to specific policy interventions to make them more effective for sustainable poverty reduction.The paper argues that under conditions of relative land abundance and/or in communities with strong social capital that helps establish a working informal order based on community trust-enforcement mechanisms, land markets can work efficiently and be progressive without formal definition of property rights and without formal registration of transfers. When these conditions do not hold, formalising the legal definition of property rights and introducing the modern institutions necessary to make land markets work both efficiently and equitably becomes essential. Two measures for this purpose are identified. Measures that need to be introduced specifically to make land sales and land rental markets work are also identified.Conclusions:there are many alternative paths of access to land, some totally informal and others rigidly formalised, some spontaneous and others relying on extensive government intervention. The efficiency of these paths are specific to the context and to the types of rural household concernedto be effective, land policy reforms need to be embedded in comprehensive policy and institutional reforms, and complemented by effective rural development interventions in support of the competitiveness of beneficiaries[Author]
