Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies
Recent Publications
Changing Customary Land Tenure Regimes in Zambia: Implications for Women’s Land Rights
By Phillan Zamchiya and Chilombo Musa Can formalization help protect women’s rights in land? Can innovative systems of recordal provide safeguards for the vulnerable position of women who hold informal or customary land rights? In our newest paper, we explore this question by an in-depth investigation into the complexities of rural certification in the case of Nyimba District, Zambia. In…
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The Land and Its People: the land question and the South African political order
Why is the land debate in South Africa so difficult to resolve? Why has it for twenty-nine years resisted the best efforts at resolution by land and agricultural policy experts? Why, in fact, do those experts sometimes seem to be mere bystanders in a superheated and emotionally charged debate dominated by opportunist politicians? Could it be that the…
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Climate Change and Rural Livelihoods in South Africa: An Agenda for Policy-Oriented Research
This report sketches the outlines of our research agenda on the intersections of climate change, agrarian change, and rural livelihoods. The report marks an important change for us. For more than twenty-five years we have been documenting the changing nature of rural livelihoods and agrarian relations on this continent, and the transformations wrought by politics, by agricultural commercialisation, value chain…
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Young African Researchers in Agriculture (YARA) Working Paper Series
Jabik, B.B. (2021). Relevant Local Climatic Knowledge for Sustainable Agro-Ecological Practices by Small-Scale Farmers in Northern Ghana Local knowledge on climatic conditions which hitherto was used to predict the likelihood of weather outcomes is under threat of extinction due to lack of documentation coupled with a gradual decline in its knowledge transfer. Using participatory and ethnographic research approaches including focus…
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