Rick has over 40 years experience working in the land sector in Southern Africa. He is part of the Land Portal knowledge engagement team working to research and develop knowledge resources including data stories, blogs and in-depth country profiles for Southern, Central and Eastern Africa.
Rick is also a Senior Research Associate with Phuhlisani NPC - a South African land sector NGO and the curator of specialist Southern African land news and analysis website https://knowledgebase.land
He tweets on land related issues Twitter account https://twitter.com/KnowledgebaseL
He has a PhD from the University of Cape Town. His research in Langa, Cape Town features as the central case study in a recent book Urban Planning in the Global South (2018), co-authored with the late Vanessa Watson, which examines the on-going contestations over land and housing in the rapidly growing cities of the global South.
In South Africa rural citizens argue that by signing the Traditional and Khoi-San Leadership Act, the President made the abusive actions of traditional leaders legal. However they have no issue with the fact that, at last, the law recognises Khoi and San leaders and communities.
In the last 13 years, a 47-year-old Liberian farmer has been embroiled in a battle with the company over his farmland. It has placed him behind bars three times. However, he still owns the land.
Mark Duffield and Nicholas Stockton write how the ecologically sustainable, communally managed subsistence pastoralism in Somalia has been displaced by militarised extractive ranching. Challenging mainstream accounts of the “drought” Duffield and Stockton argue the current crisis is the result of decades of bad development and relief interventions that have promoted impoverishment and hunger.
Cyclone Cheneso smashed into northeastern Madagascar 10 days ago, bringing strong winds and triggering downpours that have caused extensive flooding.
Sixty years after they were forcibly removed to Gugulethu by the apartheid regime in terms of the Group Areas Act some families are returning to Simon’s Town, while others haave accepted compensation.
In December, Botswana’s Court of Appeal denied a Bushmen family the right to bury their elder, Pitseng Gaoberekwe, on his ancestral land in the Kalahari Desert, from which the community has been evicted to make way for the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR). Gaoberekwe died in December 2021 but remains unburied after the Botswana government denied the family access to the diamond-rich land.
In response to allegations of companies polluting rivers, the Liberian government has conducted assessments, sometimes imposed fines, and re-affirmed its commitment to ensuring a clean and safe environment. However, its fines have always been lenient and insufficient to lead multi-million-dollar firms to significantly rethink their practices.
Msgr. Nestor-Désiré Nongo Aziagbia, Bishop of Bossangoa and President of the Episcopal Conference in the Central African Republic, calls for a revision of the land law, without which, he stresses, "Central Africans run the risk of becoming foreigners in their own country".
The government of Tanzania is further escalating the pressure on the Maasai to forcve them out of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area by seizing their cattle. Once captured, the cattle are auctioned off and exported from the area, unless the owners manage to get it back by paying a ransom to the authorities.
Pastoralists and other livestock keepers are too often pitted against conservationists. Parks are sometimes created to keep livestock and people out, and there are frequent stories in the media about pastoralists invading conservation areas during drought, sometimes resulting in conflict and violence. Pastoralism is of course not compatible with a style of conservation that encloses and excludes, but extensive livestock-keeping can be central to more people-centred conservation approaches.
