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The purpose of this paper is to describe and critically examine newer alternative approaches to the securitization of customary land rights in Sub-Saharan Africa with particular emphasis on certain challenges which need to be tackled in order for these to have an inclusive and equitable outcome at the local level. The content of the paper is primarily based on a literature review though the challenges identified with these new approaches are based on observations from the author’s own on-going research on the land tenure reform in Mozambique.

Land is consistently ranked among the sectors where people most often report having to pay bribes to access services, according to Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer. The Land Portal has summarised the latest available (dated 2013) global data here, which shows that the incidence of bribes paid for land services can be over 50% in countries such as Cambodia, India and Pakistan.

Community Land Scotland (CLS) has today published ‘Towards Land Ownership Transparency in Scotland’, part of a larger study led by Transparency International to test a framework for assessing land ownership transparency within countries.  The framework was presented at ‘Land Governance in an Interconnected World’, the Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty in Washington DC on March 20^th.

The report was prepared for Community Land Scotland by Poppea Daniel, an independent researcher.   It concludes: