The Importance of Land Tenure to Poverty Eradication and Sustainable Development in Africa

Land reforms may be categorised broadly as either redistributive reforms, which change the patterns of land distribution and occupation, or land tenure reforms, which change tenurial relations between land owners and users without necessarily altering land distribution. ii In sub-Saharan Africa the principal approaches have been tenure reform through the introduction of individual leasehold or freehold title, and, in countries with a historical heritage of highly skewed land ownership iii , the redistribution of large land holdings.