Doing Business sheds light on how easy or difficult it is for a local entrepreneur to open and run a small to medium-size business when complying with relevant regulations. It measures and tracks changes in regulations affecting 10 areas in the life cycle of a business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency.

A well-functioning land administration and management system is crucial for Madagascar's economic and social future. Land is implicated in Madagascar's ongoing economic development and social transformation in many important ways, as key a factor in its quest for economic growth, urbanization, transparent decision-making on land-related foreign investments, environment protection, vibrant and sustainable rural communities, political stability, and social cohesion.

Botswana represents one of the few development success stories in Sub-Saharan Africa. Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth averaged almost 9 percent between 1960 and 2005, far above the Sub-Saharan Africa average. Real GDP per capita grew even faster, averaging more than 10 percent a year -- the most rapid economic growth of any country in the world. The crucial question is: Why has Botswana grown the way it has done, and what lessons does it offer?

Using recent estimates of industry assistance rates, the effects of trade liberalization in the rest of the world and in Pakistan alone are analyzed using a global and a Pakistan computable general equilibrium (CGE) model under two tax replacement schemes: a direct income tax and an indirect tax replacement. The results indicate that the distributional and poverty effects in Pakistan of a unilateral liberalization of all traded goods are significantly greater than the effects of trade liberalization in the rest of the world.

Recognition of the importance of institutions that provide security of property rights and relatively equal access to economic resources to a broad cross-section of society has renewed interest in the potential of asset redistribution, including land reforms. Empirical analysis of the impact of such policies is, however, scant and often contradictory. This paper uses panel household data from India, together with state-level variation in the implementation of land reform, to address some of the deficiencies of earlier studies.

This study emerged out of an identified need to document social processes leading to land insecurity, and those leading to investment and sustainable use of lands by rural populations. Focusing on the Delta and Dry Zone, the main paddy producing regions of Myanmar, this analysis unravels the powers at play in shaping rural households’ relationship to land.

To provide for measures with State assistance to facilitate long-term security of land tenure; to regulate the conditions of residence on certain land; to regulate the conditions on and circumstances under which the right of persons to reside on land may be terminated; and to regulate the conditions and circumstances under which
persons, whose right of residence has been terminated, may be evicted from land; and to provide for matters connected therewith…”

AFJN travelled to Brewaniase, a town in Ghana’s Volta Region, to learn more about a potential land grab deal by Herakles Farms, a New York based agribusiness. Informed that Herakles Farm had acquired a large tract of land in the Volta Region. Less than a year ago the property was sold to a British company, Volta Red. This story is a warning to landowners in Africa and irresponsible African leaders who are carelessly mortgaging future generations’ inheritance during this global rush for land in Africa.

Includes key concepts for understanding land rights; land tenure and women’s property rights in Uganda; land acquisition in Uganda; who owns the land? Perspectives from the local level. Analyses how different ways of defining landownership provide very different indications of the gendered patterns of landownership and rights. Although many households report that husbands and wives jointly own the land, women are less likely to be listed on ownership documents, especially titles, and women have fewer land rights.

Compares land reform in Scotland and Africa. Examines the role of land, patterns of land holding, where is ultimate power vested, the role of customary chiefs and landowners, getting people to participate, who is the community, consultation, who is driving the agenda. Argues that legislative change alone is not enough.

Announces publication of a manual on the creation of land reform joint venture partnerships. These are commercial partnerships between landowners and historically excluded worker households or local communities. The manual is intended to assist those involved in commercial land reform ventures. Also provides details of the Land Reform Credit Facility.

Under Ugandan law a person whose land is identified for a public purpose must be compensated fairly, promptly, and prior to the acquisition of the property. But often laws and best practices remain on paper only. Many individual landowners are often ignorant about their basic rights, and lack the capacity and courage to speak out against injustice meted on them by development projects. The decision by the Ugandan government to construct an oil refinery meant that over 1,200 households were to be displaced.