Every week, RuralReporters.com collate reports on development issues in rural Africa and its environs.
This report includes some of our top picks from recent must-read research, interviews, blogs, and in-depth articles, carefully selected to help you keep up with global issues.
Here are some of the updates you may have missed from the previous week:
Land ownership is key to better incomes for rural women
Rural women’s income in developing nations can only increase if they own land, individually or jointly with joint titling only available between spouses.
Under joint titling, a surviving spouse is entitled to the entirety of the property.
The Land Registration Act( 2012) (Kenya), provides that on the death of a joint tenant, the deceased’s name will simply be stricken from the register once a death certificate is produced.
Property obtained during marriage for co-ownership and for use by both (or all) spouses is presumed to fall under joint tenancy, although the presumption may be rebutted with evidence that the property was intended for sole ownership.
Migration and rural development
Conflict, rural poverty and climate change demand increasing attention as they drive up distress migration as a last resort, which generates a tangle of moral, political and economic problems for migrants, their eventual hosts, and the transit points in between. We all have roots and few of us wish to sever them. In fact, even in the most extreme situations, people would rather remain at home.
Inclusive rural development can help on all fronts, curbing conflict, boosting sustainability and making migration a matter of choice rather than desperation.
Rural areas essential to eradicating poverty and hunger-FAO
A new report released by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) states that rural development has been and will continue to be essential to eradicating hunger and poverty.
The report, The State of Food and Agriculture 2017, notes that instead of finding a pathway out of poverty, poor rural Africans who migrate to cities are more likely to join the already large numbers of urban poor. Since the 1990s, poverty rates in sub-Saharan Africa have changed very little, and the absolute number of poor has increased, it adds.
Economic progress in developing countries since the 1990s has led to an increase of more than 1.6 billion in the number of people living above the moderate poverty line, the State of Food and Agriculture 2017, says. The benefits of this transformation have been very modest.
The future of farming in Africa is not agriculture but agribusiness
Africa is a farm lover’s dream: abundant uncultivated arable land, roughly over half the global total; tropical climates that permit long growing seasons; a young labor force; and an expanding population that provides a readily available market for produce consumption.
Yet, African countries are yet to harness these opportunities to ensure sustainable food security and food production. The average age of farmers is about 60 years—in a continent where 60% of the population is under 24 years of age. Farmers are also less educated, with younger, more educated Africans are leaving rural areas, where farms are located, and moving to cities.
Rural South Africa Children face a lifetime of lower income and poorer health
TB and violence cost rural men years of life, study finds
Rural kids denied early development services