Provides a backdrop of relevant policies and practice; a gender analysis of the policy framework governing land and investments; and recommendations on how to work towards land rights securing and better inclusion in land governance processes for women in Tanzania. Concludes that implementation of laws, including key gender equality principles, has been weak, and gender inequality in land access persists largely due to the continued dominance of (patrilineal) customary land laws and practice.

Despite progressive provisions on gender equality in Tanzania’s land laws, women have little representation in land allocation decisions. Mainstreaming gender in local regulations can help address this problem. The Tanzania Women Lawyers Association, in partnership with the World Resources Institute and Lawyers’ Environmental Action Team, developed model by-laws to improve women’s participation in local-level decision-making on village land management. This took place in Kidugalo and Vilabwa villages in Kisarawe district.

Large-scale agricultural investments impact upon men and women in different ways, yet women’s voices and interests are not always heard in decisions about land.

Paper introduces the rationale for focusing on women’s land rights and explains the Learning Route methodology and the preparation of this Route in particular, before providing background information on land tenure and women’s land rights in Rwanda and Burundi.

Includes colonial rule and land frontiers, late colonialism and modernisation, post-colonial nation-building and state-led development, community participation and community-based solutions, harmonising and devolving land administration, women’s land rights, pastoral land rights, market-led land redistribution in Southern Africa, foreign direct investment in land.

5 chapters: introduction; features, triggers, and drivers of the global rush for land; impacts; factors shaping the land rush; conclusions and policy considerations. Africa is the prime target, the best land is often being targeted for acquisition, national elites are playing a major role, the rural poor are frequently being dispossessed, compensation for resource loss is rarely adequate, women are particularly vulnerable.

Explores how global standards and guidelines contribute to gender equality and women’s empowerment, and whether more can be done through these instruments to improve the situation of women in agriculture. Includes lessons from the field.

Includes background; conceptual framework; methodology; research findings – security of tenure, cultural practices, gender inequalities, land utilisation, constraints to production, a passion for farming, gender bias against women farmers in access to and utilization of land; lessons learnt, recommendations.

Comprises notes from an informal meeting in Pretoria addressing the impasse on land reform in Southern Africa. The main focus is on overcoming problems and constraints, including on redistribution, tenure reform, the land rights of women, HIV/AIDS and donor support. Has sections on the viability of small-scale farms, post-transfer support, mobilising support for land reform, and proposed follow up. There are two main appendices; one on the status of land reform in each of the countries in the region, the other a matrix of current land issues in each country.

Over the last two decades, 200 million people across the world have been lifted out of hunger. But as climate change brings more frequent and severe weather shocks such as droughts and floods, and makes rainfall patterns less predictable, these gains are under threat, especially among Africa’s smallholder farmers. Agriculture is Africa’s biggest employer. But mean temperatures are expected to rise faster in the continent than the global average, decreasing crop yields and deepening poverty.

Argues that the debate over land reform in Africa is embedded in evolutionary models, in which it is assumed that landholding systems are evolving into individualised systems of ownership with greater market integration. This process is seen to be occurring even without state protection of private land rights through titling. Gender as an analytical category is excluded in evolutionary models. Women are accommodated only in their dependent position as the wives of landholders in idealised ’households’.

Includes land reform: perpetuating patriarchal land policies?; Fast Track Land Reform: decentralisation or recentralisation?; women’s access to land in the land reform process; constraints faced by women in accessing land; who is pushing the agenda for better access to and utilisation of land for women?; conclusion: women beneficiaries of land reform; recommendations.