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Does land redistribution in southern Africa achieve poverty reduction and livelihood improvement objectives?
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PLAAS and partners win R5.4 million research grant from UK government

The Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) of the School of Government at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, together with the Institute of Development Studies in the UK and partners in Zimbabwe and Namibia, has recently been granted around R5.4 million to investigate the livelihood impacts of land reform in the Southern African region. Funds will be provided by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Department for International Development (DfID), in a new programme of development-oriented research. Only nine out of 165 bids for funding from this programme were successful.

In southern Africa many agree that land reform is an essential component of efforts to reduce poverty and inequality, but despite important empirical studies there has to date been no systematic assessment of the poverty reduction and livelihood impacts of land reform in the region. This proposal aims to fill this data gap, developing appropriate and replicable methodologies for such an assessment.

Through case studies in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia, this project will explore to what extent land redistribution in southern Africa is achieving poverty reduction and livelihood improvement objectives. Specific objectives are to:

  1. Provide empirical data, in a systematic and comparable form, on livelihoods impacts and agrarian structure in post-land reform settings.
  2. Understand what conditions – including appropriate land transfer mechanisms, resettlement models, tenure arrangements and post-settlement support – are likely to result in poverty reduction following redistribution of land.
  3. Advance conceptual thinking about post-transfer livelihood options, interrogating what is meant by ‘viable’ land reform in the southern African context
  4. Develop replicable methodological approaches for assessing impacts at different scales – e.g. household, scheme/project, regional economy – for use as assessment and monitoring and evaluation tools.

In addition, the project aims to engage a range of end-users in government and other implementing agencies (NGOs, service providers, donors), as well as beneficiaries, in exploring the policy implications of research findings.

The project will take place over three years and will be hosted and coordinated by PLAAS, and implemented in close collaboration with researchers in Zimbabwe, Namibia and at IDS, UK.