Conference Agenda

Understanding the competing and conflicting interests on peri-urban land is crucial for informed land governance decision and well managed urbanization process. However, research on understanding of the conflicting and competing interests for peri-urban land and the role, interaction and power relation among actors and its implication on land governance has not received adequate attention by scholars and policy makers. Thus, this study aimed to identify land governance gaps arising from the roles of different actors, interaction and power relations in Ethiopia. Finally, the key findings of this study show that land governance in the transitional peri-urban areas is twisted by divergent or complimentary roles of formal and informal actors.

With the implementation of the federal structure and the reorganization of local governments there have been policy conflicts between urban expansion, land use and land value in Nepal. This study collecting data on land use from the profiles of the Pokhara Metropolitan City (PMC) in the Gandaki Province of Nepal and its 33 wards, PMC guidelines on land values implemented for land registration purposes across the city by streets and lane sites, and primary sample data collection on land use and land value has analyzed the land factor for expansion of urban activities in the predominantly agricultural and rural setting for public establishments and private economic activities. The result of the analyses has brought out various problems on land-based investment in public infrastructure, the establishment of business and economic activities in peri-urban areas of PMC. An integrated, improved and strengthened urban expansion-land use-land value policy nexus is required.

Fifteen years ago, access to land in Namibia's communal areas has only been in the confinement of traditional authorities, as the main institutions through which land can be accessed. Today, land can be accessed through existing individual landholders through the emerging informal land markets. The informal land markets are found in highly populated demographic zones, and mostly villages adjacent to the local authorities areas. According to the Communal Land Reform Act, 2002, trading of communal land is prohibited, however even with this legal prohibition land markets are rampant. This paper presents the dynamics around the emerging informal land markets in Namibia's communal areas, the drivers, and its long-term implications and structural transformations in the landscapes once considered confines of subsistence agriculture.

This paper examines contemporary contestations over ascertaining the ownership of land in Northern Ghana. Presently land in Ghana is characterized by a plural legal system where customary and statutory systems overlap. The 1979 Constitution handed back land in the North to its “traditional owners,” opening up possibilities for earth priests, chiefs, families, and individuals to re-interpret the language of the Constitution and claim ownership. In the North, the hierarchies of land tenure interests are commonly enshrined in contesting oral histories. Drawing on field research in Ghana, I view these contestations not merely as struggles over access to “resources” and land but also as conflicts over competing models of political authority and governance. By elucidating how traditional authorities and state land agencies draw on, revise, and add to these models, this project aims to contribute to broader policy and scholarly debates about land rights and governance in Africa.