- Healthy Agriculture for Healthy People
- Davos Report: Modest Progress Made on MDGs
- Panacea or Not, ICTs Can Play a Significant Role for the Rural Poor
- Touring IFPRI's Country and Regional Support Programs
- Remembering Hans Singer
- Interview with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia
- Securing Land Rights for the Poor in Africa
- Strengthening Capacity through E-Learning in Africa
- Governance that Matters for the Rural Poor by Regina Birner
- Agriculture Cannot Be Bypassed for Africa's Development
IFPRI ForumWhat kinds of land tenure reforms are needed to secure land rights for the poor in Africa? How can the rights of multiple users, including women, pastoralists, and other marginalized groups be recognized and reflected in land tenure reforms? What are the essential elements for such tenure reforms, and how can reforms be implemented to ensure effectiveness and sustainability? These questions were addressed in a workshop hosted by the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP's) Drylands Development Center and the International Land Coalition (ILC) in November 2005. They also form the basis of a dozen briefs recently published by the Collective Action and Property Rights Initiative (CAPRi), a CGIAR-wide research program convened by IFPRI.
The briefs address a broad range of land rights issues, from problems of reconciling the needs of farmers, herders, and other stakeholders using common lands, to the importance of finding innovative solutions to property rights issues. Several briefs address lessons from ongoing land tenure reform processes in Burkina Faso, Uganda, and Zambia.
Because of the prevalence of customary rights, workshop participants largely agreed that reform must reflect customary tenure, rather than seek to replace it, while also taking the necessary steps to safeguard women's rights. Participants also proposed that common property arrangements and group rights not be uniformly replaced with individual, titled rights-at least not in all settings. In situations of multiple, overlapping resource use, strengthening negotiation and conflict resolution processes can help permanent and transitory resource users secure access. Participants recognized that broad-based involvement by stakeholders at grassroots and national levels is necessary for successful tenure reforms.
New approaches, such as creating legal advice centers, may serve to inform the poor of their rights and of opportunities for claiming rights or contesting potential violations. Similarly, banks and financial institutions may alter lending rules to accommodate group rights, or conventional land administration systems may be restructured to support group-based rights structures.
IFPRI and CAPRi presented a special session on these issues at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in March 2006.