| dc.description.abstract | Land, and access to land, is one of the most
important assets for the poor in southern
Africa, both rural and urban, and probably
contributes more than any other factor to their
economic survival and the quality of their lives.
The countries of southern Africa share similar
histories of colonialisation and dispossession,
histories that continue to shape current patterns
of land tenure and administration. Most of the
countries in the region have been through a
phase of liberalisation and market reforms, or
market-related land redistribution programmes,
and since the 1990s new land laws have been
passed in several countries, which tend to
have been relatively weakly implemented and
enforced.
While land issues in the region have been
shaped by history, access to land in the subregion
is currently characterised by: scarcity of
arable land; increasing commercialisation of
land; new land-use patterns; the expansion of
agro-fuel plantations; gender inequalities; and
land ownership being concentrated in the hands
of an indigenous elite while labour tenants
and farm workers are subject to evictions,
displacement and deepening poverty. | en_US |
