This brochure summarises the project Commercialisation of Land and ‘Land Grabbing‘: Implications for Land Rights and Livelihoods in Southern Africa.

The project investigates the multiple pressures towards the commercialisation of land in Southern Africa – specifically the leasing, concessions or sale of public and communal lands to foreign companies and governments for food production, for tourism developments, for biofuel production, and for other commercial agricultural uses. These pressures are part of a global phenomenon that has accelerated since the ‘food price crisis’ of 2007-2008.

The project critically investigates how these factors impact on land rights, how land users are responding, their views of the deals and their impacts, how governments and other authorities in the region are responding (and promoting or opposing) major transnational land deals, and we work with local land users, through local research institutions, NGOs and other structures, to document the land deals and their effects, to develop recommendations for policy, and to inform advocacy in national, regional, continental and global contexts.

The project duration is three years, with the final year exclusively dedicated to dissemination and engagement with a wide spectrum of actors on the basis of research findings.