Date: January 7, 2014

Tanzania is calling on owners of large swaths of unused lands to disclose their plans for developing them” and those that do not offer adequate explanations risk having their lands repossessed by authorities. This could be an attempt to curb the large-scale land acquisitions that are sweeping the country” many of which are left unattended for years so that they can be sold at a higher price. These “land grabs” are displacing small farmers and Indigenous Peoples and threatening the social stability of the country. In 2011″ the Land Rights Research and Resources Institute estimated that 1″095 out of 1″825 land disputes in Tanzania involved large-scale land investments.