Policy Brief
Access to Land and Land Policy Reforms

The objective of this research and policy brief is to analyse different mechanisms of access to land for the rural poor in an era when redistribution through expropriative land reform is largely inconsistent with the forces of the political economy. The roads of access to land which are explored are intra-family transfers, access through community membership, land sales and rental markets, and government programmes including decollectivization and land-market assisted land reform. The array of instruments is vast, and each can be subjected to specific policy interventions to make them more effective for sustainable poverty reduction.