Evolving Land Rights, Policy and Tenure in Africa
Camilla Toulmin and Julian Quan (eds)

This book presents and discusses the key aspects of Africa’s ongoing land-policy debate, including legislative reform, the management of land rights, issues of implementation, and policy-making processes. It provides readers with examples of how different countries have approached the highly political and sensitive subject of rights to land and other natural resources. Recent innovative land reform programmes are described, and the authors assess the progress made towards more equitable land policies and highlight the challenges for the future.

The book’s 14 chapters on varied aspects of land policy in Africa are authored by an international team of 13 experts, who have in turn drawn on the experiences of 20 other specialist contributors. Much of the material they have assembled, under the editorship of Camilla Toulmin of IIED and Julian Quan of NRI, has been drawn from a workshop on Land Rights and Sustainable Development in Sub-Saharan Africa, held in February 1999, sponsored by the UK’s Department for International Development.

This publication will be of interest to those in government with responsibility for land matters, and also to development practitioners, donors, scholars and students. It is hoped that its audience will span both South and North, and – above all – that it will find an interested readership in Africa where wider participation in debates about land will help to ensure progressive, workable and acceptable land policies.

Copies can be obtained from IIED Bookshop, 3 Endsleigh Street, London WC1H 0DD, UK: website http://www.iied.org.