Land law reform through registration and titling is often viewed as a technocratic, good-governance step toward building market economies and depoliticising land transactions. In actual practice, however, land registration and titling programmes can be highly partisan, bitterly contentious, and carried forward by political logics that diverge strongly from the market-enhancing vision. This paper uses evidence from Côte d'Ivoire to support and develop this claim. In Côte d'Ivoire after 1990, multiple, opposing political logics drove land law reform as it was pursued by successive governments representing rival coalitions of the national electorate. Between the mid-1990s and 2016, different logics – alternatively privileging user rights, the ethnic land rights of autochthones, and finally a state-building logic – prevailed in succession as national government crafted and then sought to implement the new 1998 land law. The case underscores the extent to which deeply political questions are implicated in land registration and titling policies.

Measures of poverty based on consumption suggest that recent economic growth in many African countries has not been inclusive, particularly in rural areas. We argue that measures of poverty using assets may provide a different picture. We present data based on recent re-surveys of Tanzanian households first visited in the early 1990s. These demonstrate a marked increase in prosperity from high levels of poverty. It does not, however, follow that these improvements derive from GDP growth. We consider the implications of this research for further explorations of the relationship between economic growth and agricultural policy in rural areas.

Influential discourses present Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) as essential for agricultural development in Africa; a parallel, critical debate on ‘land rushes’ has denounced Land Grabs, demanding increased accountability in FDI-based land deals. This article explores an initiative located in central Mozambique, the Beira Agricultural Growth Corridor (BAGC). It shows how the international fertiliser company Yara set out to enrol actors at different levels in business, governance and agricultural development into BAGC as a public-private partnership to promote commercial agriculture. Very soon, however, Yara made shifts in its engagement and market strategy, leaving the BAGC initiative to supporting donors and local producers. The analysis presented here shows how the tension between ‘patient-capital’ requirements, high risks and low immediate returns have shaped this case over time – in a context of a national political economy framed by extractive-resource dynamics.

Transnational medical research has become a common feature in many parts of Africa. This paper explores the contribution such activity makes to the social and economic lives of those involved, including both trial subjects and local staff. By considering the value of the ‘exposure’ that involvement brings to staff and research participants, we reflect on the conversion of scientific knowledge into practical knowledge and its value to sustaining precarious livelihoods in an economically fragile city. We consider the interplay between science and sociality and argue for a need to take seriously the circulation of scientific knowledge beyond the confines of expert spaces.

This paper assesses the role of the non-farm sector in rural development in Lesotho. Evidence from studies in developing countries indicates that agriculture was formerly used as the main source of livelihood for many people in poor countries. However, due to the decline in agricultural productivity (which results in poverty and food insecurity) caused by unfavourable agro-climatic conditions, many people are turning to non-farm activities as a means of making a living. Therefore, non-farm incomes are used to provide the means of sustenance for many people. However, little attention has hitherto been paid to improving the rural non-farm sector as an alternative or complementary rural development strategy in Lesotho. This research paper uses quantitative research methods to analyse the available data. The main research findings suggest that many people make a living out of non-farm incomes. As a result, this paper proposes that the rural non-farm sector should be given more priority by the government in rural development in Lesotho.

Kenya's March 2013 elections ushered in a popular system of devolved government that represented the country's biggest political transformation since independence. Yet within months there were public calls for a referendum to significantly revise the new arrangements. This article analyses the campaign that was led by the newly elected governors in order to understand the ongoing disputes over the introduction of decentralisation in Kenya, and what they tell us about the potential for devolution to check the power of central government and to diffuse political and ethnic tensions. Drawing on Putnam's theory of two-level games, we suggest that Kenya's new governors have proved willing and capable of acting in concert to protect their own positions because the pressure that governors are placed under at the local level to defend county interests has made it politically dangerous for them to be co-opted by the centre. As a result, the Kenyan experience cannot be read as a case of ‘recentralisation’ by the national government, or as one of the capture of sub-national units by ‘local elites’ or ‘notables’. Rather, decentralisation in Kenya has generated a political system with a more robust set of checks and balances, but at the expense of fostering a new set of local controversies that have the potential to exacerbate corruption and fuel local ethnic tensions in some parts of the country.