Conference Papers and Reports
Permanent URI for this collection
Browse
Browsing by Author "Hall, Ruth"
Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Agricultural investment, gender and land in Africa: Towards inclusive equitable and socially responsible investment(Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2014) Hall, Ruth; Osorio, MarthaThe Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations; the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa; the Future Agricultures Consortium (FAC); and the Land Policy Initiative (LPI) of the African Union; the African Development Bank and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), co-hosted a multi-stakeholder conference in Cape Town, South Africa, 5–7 March 2014. The conference was attended by representatives of governments, the private sector, civil society, producer organisations, development partners, donors and academics from the following countries: Ghana, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Italy, Uganda, Canada, United States and the United Kingdom. The conference was a forum for in-depth discussions and sharing of experiences on land-related agricultural investments. Participants deliberated on which approaches to agricultural investments can benefit African states and their citizens. Presenters shared qualitative and quantitative evidence on investments, along with country-based case studies, and the conference culminated in recommendations by sectoral and multi-sectoral working groups on actions required to promote inclusive, equitable and socially responsible investments in Africa.Item Beyond the 'problem' narrative: Towards an agenda for improved policy and practice in land reform(2013) Hall, RuthThe ‘problem’ narrative •Land reform is too slow: it must be speeded up and better ways found of acquiring land at reasonable cost •Land reform beneficiaries are not productive enough: they must be ‘disciplined’ or land must be given over to those with skills and own means to be productive, or to commercial strategic partners to farm insteadItem Commercial farming and agribusiness in South Africa and their changing roles in Africa’s agro-food system(Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2015) Hall, Ruth; Cousins, BenOur paper is on commercial farming and agribusiness in South Africa and their changing roles in Africa’s agro-food system, as a response to debates and theoretical propositions about internal agrarian change in BRICS countries and their relations with other middle-income countries and the old hubs of capital. South Africa is of course an outlier among the BRICS group of countries, given its far smaller economy, and was included only in 2010, as the only candidate that could be seen as economically and politically dominant in Africa – though by last year, Nigeria had overtaken South Africa as the largest economy in Africa.Item Commercialisation of land and ‘land grabbing’ in Southern Africa: Implications for land rights and rural livelihoods(2015) Hall, RuthThis project is conceived as a response to widespread concerns about the ‘land grab’ phenomenon in sub-Saharan Africa, and the dearth of grounded studies to understand how these deals are structured, who facilitates them, how local people respond, and the degree to which protection of land rights in existing policy and legislation is adequate to safeguard the interests of poor land users in the face of pressures towards commercialisation, in which governments and domestic and foreign companies are often actively involved.Item Development of evidence-based policy around small-scale farming(Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), 2015) Aliber, Michael; Hall, RuthHow to support small-scale and larger commercial farmers, and to make sure that they are productive and contribute effectively to the rural economy and to national food security.Item Land reform futures(2015) Hall, RuthOverarching story • Away from pro-poor neo-liberalism towards the convergence of state resources, private capital and traditional authority • Elite capture of shrinking state resources – dangerous combination in context of escalating political rhetoric • Net effects: conditional tenure (‘productive discipline’, ‘disciplined service’) transferring rights and entitlements to dependence on state and chiefly patrimonialismItem The political economy of land governance in Africa: The role of universities in decolonising curricula and promoting critical scholarship(Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, 2019-10-08) Hall, Ruth; Isaacs, MoeniebaDecolonising the land requires decolonising our universities. In South Africa there is a live conversation about the need to decolonise our universities—an idea that expands beyond transforming our curricula, to drawing on the work of African scholars, to changing the character of our institutions, linking them more closely with communities and with policy audiences. As we think about decolonising our universities, we need to think about how, as African institutions, we pull together to strengthen land governance across the continent. As sites of knowledge production and training, universities are central to advancing and realising the African Union’s agenda on land. The key documents here are the African Union’s Framework and Guidelines on Land Policy (2009) and the Declaration on Land Issues and Challenges in Africa (2010) adopted by the Heads of State.Item Towards a national minimum wage: what do we know about wages and employment in agriculture?(2014) Hall, Ruth• Agriculture is a good sector to learn from when considering a national minimum wage because: – It is historically a low-wage sector – It has been shedding jobs – It is enormously diverse – A minimum wage was introduced recently (2003) – The outcomes have partly contradicted predictions, especially since the 50% increase in 2013.