Abstract

The UNDP’s Drylands Development Center, the International Land Coalition (ILC), and CAPRi share the conviction that land tenure can be a mechanism through which the goals of gender equity, poverty reduction, efficiency and sustainable resource management can be achieved.

A wide range of issues are captured and reiterated in the 12 briefs contained in this collection. These include: the prevalence and importance of customary tenure; the prevalence and importance of common property arrangements; constraints to women’s access under both customary and statutory tenure; the need to secure common property and other forms of tenure; and the importance of broad based participation to secure broad consensus among multiple actors in order to enhance the efficiency, equity and sustainability objectives of land tenure reforms.

Press statement and Fact Sheets on Land Rights in Africa

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• Introduction(PDF 117K)
  Esther Mwangi and Eric Patrick

• Brief 1: Land Tenure, Land Reform, and the Management of Land and Natural Resources in Africa (PDF 121K)
  Joan Kagwanja

• Brief 2: Legal Dualism and Land Policy in Eastern and Southern Africa (PDF 112K)
  Martin Adams and Stephen Turner

• Brief 3: Legal Pluralism as a Policy Option: Is it Desirable? Is it Doable? (PDF 115K)
  Patrick McAuslan

• Brief 4: Gender Issues in Land Tenure under Customary Law (PDF 116K)
  Patricia Kameri-Mbote

• Brief 5: Innovations in Land Tenure, Reform and Administration in Africa (PDF 126K)
  Clarissa Augustinus and Klaus Deininger

• Brief 6: The Commons and Customary Law in Modern Times: Rethinking the Orthodoxies (PDF 124K)
  Liz Alden Wily

• Brief 7: Biting the Bullet: How to Secure Access to Drylands Resources for Multiple Users (PDF 121K)
  Esther Mwangi and Stephan Dohrn

• Brief 8: Decentralization: An Enabling Policy for Local Land Management (PDF 123K)
  Hubert M.G. Ouedraogo

• Brief 9: Will Formalizing Property Rights Reduce Poverty in South Africa's "Second Economy"? Questioning Mythologies of Hernando de Soto (PDF 127K)
  Ben Cousins, Tessa Cousins, Donna Hornby, Rosalie Kingwill, Lauren Royston, and Warren Smit

• Brief 10: Getting the Process Right: The Experience of the Uganda Land Alliance in Uganda (PDF 114K)
  Oscar Okech K. and Harriet Busingye

• Brief 11: Getting Agreement on Land Tenure Reform: The Case of Zambia (PDF 114K)
  Joseph Mbinji

• Brief 12: The Land Policy Process in Burkina Faso: Building a National Consensus (PDF 150K)
  Hubert M.G. Ouedraogo