Land governance by country

Land is an essential source of livelihood for a majority of Sierra Leoneans. Most of Sierra Leone’s population lives in rural areas and it’s GDP is largely based on agriculture. The three main livelihood activities surveyed in the 2015 population and housing census are crop farming, animal husbandry and fishery, which depend largely on access to and ownership of land. Smallholders mostly cultivate rice, cassava, cocoa, coffee, cashew, groundnut, palm oil, vegetables and other fruit trees.

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Despite the achievement of Constitutional democracy in 1994, 'the land question' is at the heart of South Africa's struggles to overcome the cumulative legacies of nearly 350 years of white minority rule. The emotive quality of land policies evokes painful legacies fuelled by disappointments with the official land reform programme ushered in by the new Constitution of 1996. There is broad agreement that land reform programmes have not fulfilled their aims to significantly redistribute land and productive agrarian capacity, strengthen land tenure for the majority, and settle the restitution claims of victims of land dispossession.

Learn more about the successes and challenges in South Africa.

Rwanda is a small country and landlocked. It covers an area of 26,338 km². In Rwanda, land is an important issue due to two different characteristics: first is that Rwanda is one of the most densely populated countries in the world (416 people per km2 – (NISR, 2012). Being an agricultural country, where over 85% of its working class citizens depend on agriculture, adds more pressure on land as the sole economic capital to the rural peasants.

Learn more about successes and challenges and find more detailed land governance data in Rwanda.

In Paraguay, land is still a factor that determines the living conditions of a majority of the population. Current land tenure is characterized by a huge concentration of land being put in the hands of a small group of landowners. This unequal distribution of land is the result of a long and contentious history that has caused the dispossession and uprooting of thousands of men and women in the countryside. Meanwhile, others have managed to remain in their communities through enormous sacrifice and willpower.

Learn more about successes and challenges and find more detailed land governance data in Paraguay.