Africa

RDI has been working in Sub-Saharan Africa since 2001, an area plagued by widespread poverty and violence.  Currently, RDI is working in two countries that have been severely affected by this instability, Angola and Rwanda.  RDI has also worked in Uganda.  As these countries strive to avoid further conflict and meet the needs of their poor, insecure land tenure remains a persistent obstacle.  

RDI’s goals for this region are to:

1.  Improve tenure security for poor rural and urban households as to both individual and common property resources;

2. Increase women’s access and rights to land;

3. Reduce conflicts over land; and

4. Improve the legal and administrative capacity of government officials charged with administering land policy.

Angola  Following independence from Portugal in 1975, Angola descended into a civil war that lasted until 2002, killing more that 500,000 people.  The 2002 death of UNITA rebel leader Jonas Savimbi ushered in the beginning of peace for Angolans.  Yet, as Angola has begun to rebuild itself, it is met with constant challenges. The 27-year war displaced 3.8 million people, disrupted economic activity and destroyed most of the country’s infrastructure.  More than three quarters of Angola’s population now live in extreme poverty. More than 85% depend on subsistence agriculture, yet much of the country’s farmable land is riddled with land mines. 

Since 2002, RDI has been working with the Government of Angola and civil society NGOs to review and make recommendations about its new land law and implementing legislation. In the capital, Luanda, RDI conducted key interviews with many government, NGO, and donor representatives. RDI also conducted rural fieldwork in two provinces, including a visit to a quartering camp where UNITA rebels and their families lived until their resettlement was arranged.  Specifically, RDI has been focusing on customary common property rights (including cattle grazing), formalization of land rights based upon occupation, land dispute resolution, land titling and registration, and land market transactions. 

Rwanda

Between April and June 1994, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed in just 100 days. Today, more than a decade after the genocide, Rwanda is healing, yet demographic changes and so much upheaval pose daunting challenges.  Historically, land pressure has been a severe problem in Rwanda, where over 90% of the population practices agriculture and lives in rural areas.  For the hundreds of thousands of returned refugees and survivors of the genocide, land is key to rebuilding their lives.

Helping Rwandans to get a piece of land to call their own is anything but simple. Throughout Rwanda‘s turbulent history, much of its population has been displaced at different times, some as early as 1959 around the time of Rwanda’s independence. As refugees fled, those left behind moved onto abandoned land to farm.  After the 1994 genocide and civil war, waves of refugees returned to find their old land occupied by others, some who may have been working the land as early as 1959.  Conflicting claims to the same land, coupled with desperate poverty, create tremendous tensions in this already land-poor country.

As they rebuild, the Rwandan government is also pursuing land reform, a sensitive issue in a largely agrarian society where small agricultural plots are the sole source of survival for impoverished families. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and RDI have stepped in to help.

RDI is currently working with Rwanda’s Ministry of Lands and Environment (MINITERE) and USAID to develop a new and comprehensive policy and legislative framework to govern land relations.  Specifically, RDI is working with MINITERE to develop regulations dealing with expropriation, land valuation, land commissions, land rights and tenure types and land titling and registration.  This includes a suite of laws and regulations needed to implement the overlying land laws and specific efforts to improve women’s access and rights to land.  This project is being carried out in coordination with the UK Department for International Development (DFID).            

Uganda 

Uganda has also experienced its share of violence.  The 1970’s oppressive government resulted in the deaths of over 300,000 people, followed by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in 1987, which has been conducting a rebel campaign in northern Uganda.  More than12,000 people have perished, 20,000 children have been kidnapped and two million people are internally displaced. Like Angola and Rwanda, Uganda shares the same land tenure issues with many rural families lacking secure access to land. 

In 2001, RDI lawyers, in cooperation with Ugandan counterparts, conducted extensive field research to gather information for three studies: common property, land markets, and women’s access and rights to land.  The Government of Uganda used the studies in its ongoing efforts to implement the country’s 1998 Land Act

For more information on RDI’s work in Africa, please contact Radha Friedman at radhaf@rdiland.org.

Details about RDI’s work in Africa can be found here.

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