Towards Land Policy reforms and Innovations in Southern Africa

The Southern African region shares a colonial history that has been characterized by inequitable access to land and resources and has affected the political, social and economic development of these countries. This legal dualism/pluralism in land governance and administration is partly fueling an increasing mismatch
between the land reform initiatives being implemented and the associated land policy concepts, by maintaining hierarchical, inequitable and discriminatory land tenure systems.
The NELGA (Network of Excellence on Land Governance in Africa) initiative was established to promote demand driven research on land policy issues and connect scholars and researchers across Africa through academic networks.
This paper presents a project implemented by the NUST-NLEGA Hub at the Namibia University of Science and Technology. The project focuses on a land governance scoping study of the eight participating countries within the region. Each country team developed a report with description and assessment of the national land governance issues. The reports follow a common template describing the land governance issues and identifies the key challenges. The reports, thereby, enables comparison between the countries as well as learning form best practice. This should facilitate further research collaboration and innovation towards meeting the key challenges faced by the countries and within the region as a whole.
The paper presents the key findings in terms of a synthesis report on Land Governance in Southern Africa leading into a Research and Capacity Development Strategy for Land Governance Innovation in Southern Africa that is currently under preparation.