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Land and its good management are central to agrarian development, environmental
security and to rural governance in Africa - and therefore
important for livelihoods and poverty reduction. A recent
workshop on Securing Customary Land Tenure in Africa highlighted
lessons from DFID's Land Tenure Advisory Group:
- Land is the principal natural capital asset (in many circumstances
the only capital asset ) available to rural Africans and
is therefore a critical livelihood resource;
- Secure land rights help provide livelihood security, and facilitate
long term investment and planning by land users. The policies
and institutional processes which regulate access to land
are therefore important in enabling rural African's to achieve
and develop sustainable livelihoods;
- Centralised land institutions frequently fail to cater for the complex
and changing sets of land and natural resource rights at
local level, and so local institutions for the governance
of land are particularly important; and
- Simple, transparent processes for documenting local land rights whether
held by individuals, kin-groups or wider communities help
to secure their land assets against the risks that land
rights may be extinguished by inappropriate legislation
or the actions of unscrupulous traditional leaders or more
powerful land claimants.
The
Land Tenure Advisory Group (LTAG) draws members from DFID
together with representatives from the International Institute
for Environment and Development (IIED),
the Natural Resources Institute (NRI)
and Oxfam. Much of LTAG's
work over last 2 years has been directed at extending knowledge
and capacity in land policy and land tenure amongst African
governments and civil society organisations through support
to the emergence of African regional networks - which have
come to be known as LANDNET Africa.
There are strong linkages between these findings and the livelihoods
issues being addressed by the Policy,
Institutions and Processes group and new research at IDS
on Sustainable Livelihoods in Southern Africa .
Further discussion of these issues through the Post-it Board
would be valuable.
Julian Quan
Land Tenure Adviser
Rural Livelihoods Department
DFID
More information on the Securing Customary Land Tenure
workshop:
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