Despite increasing attention in recent years, little evidence has been available on the issue of women, land and corruption in Africa to inform effective policy-making. There has been no compilation of relevant background information, lessons learnt and approaches to tackling land corruption as it affects women. This publication aims to address that gap, providing practitioners and decision-makers with a compendium of research findings, contextual information and practical solutions to help fulfil women’s land rights. It presents specifically gendered evidence on how women are affected by land corruption differently from men, followed by responses tailored to women’s needs to address gender-based inequalities over land. Covers Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Sierra Leone, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

Brief highlights key attributes of national constitutions, laws, and regulations that play a fundamental role in protecting indigenous and rural women’s rights to community forests and other community lands. These legislative best practices were derived from a 2017 analysis of over 400 national laws and regulations, Power and Potential, which evaluates the extent to which women’s rights to community forests are recognized by national law in 30 low- and middle-income countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Over the past decade, a spike in demand for agricultural land in developing countries has generated a great deal of political and media attention. While many investments bring opportunities for communities, some have wrongfully pushed residents and workers off their lands or have caused social and environmental harm. Some development projects, including agroforestry initiatives and irrigation schemes, have also become embroiled in land conflict. Left unaddressed, escalating land disputes can result in project delays, increased operational, labour and legal costs, supply chain issues, damage to property, security concerns, and reputational harm. This briefing note aims to provide practical guidance on identifying and addressing community land conflicts to prevent them escalating into disputes between the project and local communities.

Women disproportionately bear the negative impacts of large-scale land investments (in agribusiness, extractives, logging) in the global South. Lack of formal land rights and their subordinate role in the household and community lead to their marginalization in decision-making processes and the bypassing of them in the distribution of compensation and the planning and implementation of resettlement.  In Tanzania and Mozambique, laws require community consultations and the payment of compensation to affected local communities, but they fail to adequately account for women’s concerns and perspectives. There are many gaps in the legal frameworks. Women are underrepresented in decision-making bodies, and laws lack mechanisms to ensure meaningful participation in community consultation and consent processes.

Covers guidance on land corruption, impact of land corruption on gender dynamics, mapping land corruption risks, corruption and urban land management, interaction of corruption, legal frameworks and land reform, land corruption in relation to investors, selected indicators of land corruption.

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.

Kenya Land Alliance (KLA) disaggregated and analysed 1,000,099 out of about 3,200,000 title deeds issued by the Government of Kenya from 2013-17. The booklet reveals that women only got 103,043 titles representing 10.3%, while men got 865,095 titles representing 86.5% of the total. The data sampled shows that out of 10,129,704 hectares of land titled between 2013-17 women got 163,253 hectares representing a paltry 1.62%, while men got 9,903,304 hectares representing 97.76%.  This booklet is launched as a warning against complacency on the importance of gender equality in land title issuance.

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.

Seeks to guide investigative bodies, judges, and prosecutors engaged with the factual and legal dimensions of land grabbing, as well as advocates, political institutions and companies working to curb this phenomenon. By prosecuting even a few of the most serious instances of the crimes arising from land acquisitions, the ICC can send a strong message to corporations and governments, deterring future violation and beginning to bring justice to victims of illegitimate land seizures. Ongoing impunity should no longer be tolerated for crimes against humanity arising in connection with land grabbing.

Contains the common goal, delivery challenges, five stories and takeaways, larger lessons.

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

Includes rangelands degradation, drylands, pastoralists, pastoralism, land tenure and governance in rangelands, land use planning, international initiatives aimed at protecting rangelands, drylands, pastoralism and pastoralists. Selected indicators.

Drawing on 18 years of research, offers these 10 priorities for getting agriculture moving again: land tenure, finance, partnerships, government loans, access to marketing, value addition, smart support systems, irrigation, mechanisation, local economic development.

One of the new government’s major policy priorities has to be to get agriculture moving as a motor of growth. The long-running issue of outstanding compensation payments has meant that international donors and financiers have not engaged with land reform areas, missing out on supporting major development opportunities. People on the resettlement farms are producing significant quantities of food and other agricultural products. Recent figures make it clear how vital they are to Zimbabwe’s struggling economy. So quick resolution of the compensation issue is essential.

Zimbabwe today has an agrarian structure made up of small, medium and large farms, all under different forms of land ownership. A landscape once dominated by 4,500 large-scale commercial farmers is now populated by about 145,000 smallholder households, occupying 4.1 million hectares, and around 23,000 medium-scale farmers on 3.5 million hectares. Knowing exactly who has land and where is difficult. Illegal multiple allocations combine with unclear boundary demarcations and an incomplete recording system. Many new land owners don’t have formal documentation and lack leases or permits confirming ownership. There is a great deal of uncertainty given the often haphazard, sometimes corrupt, approach to land reallocation that took place under the land reform programme. Given that the landscape is very different to what went before, a new system of land administration is urgently needed.

Analyses the configuration of land rights among different users of land and discusses the implementation of Tanzania’s land policy reform. The key rights explored include those of small-scale producers (farmers and pastoralists) and large-scale investors. Explores how the state defines, allocates, protects and compensates for land when it appropriates such rights. Looks at the formal, informal and procedural rights that provide for and protect the rights of small-scale producers and investors, and the compensation offered to those who give up their land for investment. Also discusses how these rights are configured during the investment negotiation and implementation phases of land deals. Argues that while the proposed draft National Land Policy of 2016 tries to address the core problems related to the poor implementation of the 1995 Land Policy, the current draft also has significant shortcomings and is only likely to be successful if the process becomes more inclusive, prioritizes small-scale local producers, and addresses issues of inequality and ethnic and class-based struggles over land.

Over the last two decades, 200 million people across the world have been lifted out of hunger. But as climate change brings more frequent and severe weather shocks such as droughts and floods, and makes rainfall patterns less predictable, these gains are under threat, especially among Africa’s smallholder farmers. Agriculture is Africa’s biggest employer. But mean temperatures are expected to rise faster in the continent than the global average, decreasing crop yields and deepening poverty. IRIN has now completed a project to outline the challenges that global warming is triggering, and to explore what local communities are doing to adapt and reduce their vulnerability. This e-book covers 4 countries – Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, and Zimbabwe – with the goal of sharing lessons learned so that small-scale farmers everywhere can be better supported as their challenges multiply. It provides a platform for policy discussion, and for the voices of those men and women on the front lines of climate change to be heard. It contains field reporting on: climate-related problems and threats such as desertification in Nigeria, soil salination in Senegal, and the lack of technical support available to smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe; the range of responses and solutions adopted by farmers and governments; and how livestock-raising communities in the Kenyan county of Turkana are facing up to one of the worst droughts in living memory.

Conflict began in August 2011 when 3 village communities in eastern-central Côte d’Ivoire learned that the Belgian corporation SIAT was about to move onto their land. Report details the increasing conflicts and legal battles that followed.

Rubber is now replacing food production. SIAT has ignored the country’s legal framework.

From the mid-2000s, a commodity boom underpinned a wave of land use investments in low- and middle-income countries. While agribusiness, mining and petroleum concessions often involve promises of jobs and public revenues, they have also prompted concerns about land dispossession, exclusionary investment models and infringements of the rights of vulnerable groups. One of the major challenges is in empowering rural people to make informed choices, exercise their rights and have their voices heard. A solid understanding of evolving investment trends is essential for designing effective initiatives. This report discusses evolving patterns in land use investments, developments in investment frameworks, and implications for legal empowerment approaches.

Publication features the key provisions on land governance in recent relevant international frameworks. Presents where new issues or themes appeared, issues that have gained additional support and those that have received less attention. Also highlights the particularities, strengths and potential gaps of the individual frameworks, as well as their similarities, complementarities and differences. Emphasizes the critical role of land governance in the realization of human rights, enjoyment of secure land rights and in the overall achievement of sustainable development objectives.

A Kenyan air pilot involved in a project testing the use of drones for land mapping and registration in Kenya, Rwanda and Ethiopia. If successful, hopes it will be rolled out elsewhere on the continent. Still awaiting permission to fly the drones. Kenya has developed guidelines on drones. Hoped to increase the number of land parcels that are mapped and clarify figures for different types of land ownership – private, public or community.

Identifies the drivers of the land use changes that have displaced millions of rural people and continue to threaten millions more – particularly women; it unpacks the key land policy guidelines and why they have so far failed to ‘stick’ on the ground, and it sets out 14 actions to get to grips with the problem and push forward community land rights across Africa.

Under the 1995 Land Act, all land has been vested in the President, who holds it in perpetuity on behalf of the Zambian people. Yet customary land rights are recognized by the Act and several new initiatives aim at documenting these land rights to ensure tenure security for communities across the country. Provides a detailed overview of land legislation and regulations, land tenure classifications, land use trends, land investment and women’s land rights. Argues that in the wake of an insatiable socio-economic demand for land, Zambia’s land governance is plagued with ungoverned land allocations and corruption. Offers free access to a wide range of datasets, publications, and other land-related content, visualizes data from a variety of land-related indicators, enabling the cross-country comparisons on maps, infographics and tables, and showcases user-friendly infographics.

Some commercial farmers in Serenje District, Central Province of Zambia, have acquired thousands of hectares while ignoring laws meant to prevent forced evictions. Some have used bulldozers to forcibly evict residents whose families have farmed the land for generations. This has been devastating for the communities and particularly hard on women.

Describes land reforms, recent sectoral developments, land legislation and regulations, land tenure systems and land use trends, as well as land investments, land conflict and historical injustices. Offers free access to a wide range of datasets, publications, and other land-related content, visualizes data from a variety of land-related indicators, enabling the cross-country comparisons on maps, infographics and tables, and showcases user-friendly infographics.

Focuses on South Africa’s various land laws and regulations, tenure classifications, and examines barriers to legal recognition of land rights. Covers land use and distribution trends and information on land investments. Analyses statutory recognition of women’s land rights and whether recent tenure reforms have improved access to and control of land for women. Offers free access to a wide range of datasets, publications, and other land-related content, visualizes data from a variety of land-related indicators, enabling the cross-country comparisons on maps, infographics and tables, and showcases user-friendly infographics.

Over the past decade, a spike in demand for agricultural land in developing countries has generated much attention. While many investments bring opportunities for local communities, some have pushed residents and workers off their lands or have caused social and environmental harm. Local land conflicts are common in countries where land governance is weak, but can be hard for outsiders to spot. Failure to identify and address conflicts in a timely way can result in disputes escalating into wider conflicts. Investors may be inadvertently complicit in the wrongful displacement of people, which can lead to revocation of operational licenses or undermine the social license to operate.

Over the last few years, agribusinesses, investment funds and government agencies have demonstrated a growing interest in acquiring large portions of land particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Analysing a number of these deals in Africa suggests that objectives are usually not attained and their sustainability appears to be uncertain. Report’s aim is to provide technical guidelines to be used as a tool that may foster an enabling environment for sustainability and provide a basis for win-win investments that effectively contribute to the socio-economic development of the host countries. Argues this is feasible when the arrangements benefit both the investors and the majority of the population in the given area.

A land audit responding to the facts that policy formulation around the very sensitive and complex issue of land has been based on perception rather than fact for too long and that no reliable figures on land ownership in South Africa exist. Acknowledges that there are still some gaps in the data, but presents statistics that  shed light on ownership patterns of agricultural land in South Africa. Required a multi-pronged approach. The amount of agricultural land has decreased from approximately 79.3% in 1994 to 76.3% in 2016. Land ownership by Previously Disadvantaged Individuals has increased significantly from 14.9% in 1994 to 29.1% in 2016. The setting of government targets on land reform has created expectations but there was no way to measure whether these targets were being achieved as no comprehensive land audit was done. This audit should provide a foundation.

Fresh clashes over land in a cocoa plantation in Cavally Region in the west left 7 dead and 5,000 fleeing their homes. An increasing polarisation of ethnic identity. At least 100 cases of land occupations since 2013.

Communities are key drivers for the fulfilment of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Discusses Namati’s work in supporting communities to protect and document their lands and natural resources, which is driven by each community’s articulated vision of the future. Namati’s approach involves: laying the groundwork, strengthening community governance of land and natural resources, harmonizing boundaries and documenting community lands, government registration and titling, preparing communities to prosper.

Traces the history of the Interlaken Group, founded in 2013 as a coalition of corporations, investors, civil society organizations and INGOs with the goal of turning corporations into allies in the process of securing land rights. Gradually building a sense of trust. Opening the door to new kinds of partnerships.

A 78-page list, much of it pretty grim reading. Divided into reports and press cuttings, in alphabetical order. The reports section comprises a ‘1stXI’ of Future Agricultures Consortium, GRAIN, IIED, IISD, Mokoro, Oakland Institute, Oxfam, Pambazuka News, PLAAS, RRI and TNI, followed by a further 36 from Action Aid to the World Resources Institute. The press cuttings cover Global, Africa, 31 African countries or regions from Angola to Zimbabwe, followed by Middle East, Asia and China. Countries with greatest coverage are Ethiopia, Liberia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania. The URLs are correct as of today’s date.

Highlights the role of European Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) in possible land grabs and questionable forestry projects in Africa. Documents 9 cases involving 8 of the European DFIs in Cameroon, DR Congo, Sao Tome, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Uganda. Raises the need for more independent research into these projects and for much more scrutiny of DFI investment portfolios, both by DFIs themselves and national parliaments. DFIs need to be placed under proper democratic scrutiny and their investments held to account by parliaments. DFIs must subject their investments to better screening to ensure they do not contribute to land grabs or deforestation.

Just published a new book, Untitled. Securing land tenure in urban and rural South Africa which disputes the argument that large-scale land titling is the solution to all land problems. Need for alternative approaches. Book offers an analysis of social tenures. Rights are often shared and overlapping and derive from accepted membership of a community or kinship group. Could provide a degree of official and legal recognition of rights within social tenures. Alternatives pose their own challenges but not an impossible task.

ROAPE’s Janet Bujra questions Marjorie Mbilinyi about her fifty years of campaigning against patriarchal oppression on many fronts in Tanzania. Mbilinyi traces the legitimisation of feminism as a means to understand and a way to organise for and with women. This is not a feminism lifted from Europe or the US, but one generated in response to Tanzanian and African realities. As a teacher, analyst and organiser, Marjorie Mbilinyi has inspired a generation to question patriarchy and to set up groups to study and fight against it collectively, and to do so in tandem with struggles against class oppression, neoliberalism and imperialism. She identifies and describes resistance not only from men in power but also from those who position themselves on the radical Left. Grateful to ROAPE for permission to reproduce this article on this website.

Independent Kenya failed to recognize customary interests in land as possessing equal force as statutory derived rights. Issues related to land rights are perceived as  root causes of conflicts occurring in the 1990s and 2000s. The 2010 Constitution has embodied the fundaments of land reforms; it has acknowledged “communities” as legally entitled to hold land. Paper studies decision-making processes via a socio-anthropological approach showing how it contributes to understanding the issues at stake and the politics surrounding the design of new legislation around “community land”. Documents the manner in which local actors participate in, interpret, divert, or exploit policy debates ongoing at the national level.

The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights has issued a landmark judgement for marginalised communities across Africa. It ruled that the Kenyan government violated the rights of the Mau Ogiek people by evicting them from their ancestral land in the Mau Forest complex. This is the first time the court has ruled on an indigenous peoples’ rights case or in a case with mass human rights violations indicated. All indigenous forest peoples in Kenya (c.135,000) will find it easier to advance their own claims for recognition as owners of presently classified “government” forests. The case has also given indigenous peoples throughout Africa resounding legal recognition that they exist and are due the support of international law.

Reports from meeting near Bilbao from peasants in South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Niger, Mali, Senegal and Ghana. Almost everywhere in Africa the elite and corporations are undertaking efforts to capture and control people’s basic means of production, such as land, mineral resources, seeds and water. These resources are increasingly being privatized due to the myriad of investment agreements and policies driven by new institutional approaches, imposed on the continent by western powers and Bretton Woods institutions.

A practical guide focusing on investigating accountability and accountability politics in the context of the current global rush for land and other natural resources. Purpose is to provide practical information to rural communities in Mali, Nigeria, Uganda and South Africa, that they can use in collective action and engagement strategies aimed at strengthening their tenure of land, fisheries and forest.

Includes natural resources as a driver of conflicts; gender dimensions of land conflict; displacement from land conflict; impact of land conflicts on traditional institutions; land disputes/conflicts in different countries/regions; what can be done – 5 general recommendations – foster dialogue and deal with asymmetrical power relations, embrace the past, present and future, secure land rights to contribute to peace building, build on (and strengthen) existing measures, start small.

Vital that the new Land Commission looks at the range of land issues in the round. Need comprehensive district by district approach, attuned to local circumstances and flexible. Enormous challenge to recreate a land administration system. Outlines vital elements and how they must work together.

Contains literature review, methodology, findings and recommendations. Concluded: 1) the land administration is extremely complicated and opaque, which has led to widespread and entrenched corrupt practices; 2) institutional deficiencies exacerbate the effects of corruption in the land sector on women, especially those in poverty; 3) the judicial system, integral to resolving land disputes, is severely impeded; 4) there is a large rural/urban, gender, and socioeconomic divide in access to and capabilities of ICTs. Recommends that Transparency International strengthen advocacy efforts directed at all levels of government, sensitize communities on land rights and gender, and build networks and capacities at its Ugandan national chapter.

A five and a half minute video demonstrating that from cookies and ice cream to soap and shampoo, every second product in supermarkets contains palm oil. New oil plantations grab land and destroy the environment in e.g. Sierra Leone. Demonstrates that there is also a fair and environmentally friendly alternative way.

No new plantation, state or private has succeeded since independence but Frelimo leaders persist in dreaming of giant mechanised farms funded by hundreds of millions of dollars from abroad. Lists some of these. Portucel: trading land for jobs did not work. A comment on risk sharing.

Covers global panorama, where the situation has worsened, the context for killings, moving forward. At least 200 land and environmental defenders were killed in 2016, the highest on record, spread across 24 countries. Cites their names. With many killings unreported, and even less investigated, likely that the true number is actually far higher. This tide of violence driven by an intensifying fight for land and natural resources, as mining, logging, hydro-electric and agricultural companies trample on people and the environment in their pursuit of profit. As more and more extractive projects were imposed on communities, many of those who dared to speak out and defend their rights were brutally silenced. Tells the stories of these activists and the threats they’ve faced. Highlights the courage of their communities as they stand up to the might of multinationals, paramilitaries and even their own governments in the most dangerous countries on Earth to be a defender. Defending national parks is now riskier than ever, particularly in Africa where large numbers of rangers are being killed, especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The 1,000^th entry on this site. Origins of the site with Oxfam in 2000, purpose of the site – target audience, objectives, why different?; sources, problems encountered, some sort of conclusion. In essence a pro-poor land reform site. A major challenge remains getting hold of reliable information when many continue to have vested interests in making this very difficult.

Looks at seven key principles for tenure design drawing on the international literature and at multiple routes to land tenure security. Argues that Zimbabwe needs to get over the idea that freehold title is the solution to all ills.

The challenges are: the methodology for valuation, the state’s capacity for valuation, the process for dispute resolution, and the funding of the process. The backlog created by lack of action in the past 17 years must be dealt with urgently.

Land reform has generated a range of disputes including overlapping boundaries, double occupations, competing authorities etc. Lists areas in which potential disputes arise.