Commercialisation of land and ‘land grabbing’ in Southern Africa: Implications for land rights and rural livelihoods

Abstract

This project is conceived as a response to widespread concerns about the ‘land grab’ phenomenon in sub-Saharan Africa, and the dearth of grounded studies to understand how these deals are structured, who facilitates them, how local people respond, and the degree to which protection of land rights in existing policy and legislation is adequate to safeguard the interests of poor land users in the face of pressures towards commercialisation, in which governments and domestic and foreign companies are often actively involved.