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The IISD guide outlines a framework for negotiating agricultural investment contracts, emphasizing the primacy of national legislation over contracts and international treaties. It provides a comprehensive model contract covering land rights, financial obligations, social and environmental commitments, and dispute resolution, while advocating for transparency and community engagement to ensure sustainable rural development.

The IISD Guide to Negotiating Investment Contracts for Farmland and Water is a comprehensive tool designed for governments and communities to manage foreign investments in agricultural land. It emphasizes the primacy of domestic law over investment contracts and international treaties, while providing a model contract to fill gaps where domestic laws are weak. The guide outlines a preparatory phase involving investor screening, community engagement, and impact assessments, and proposes specific contractual provisions covering tenure, financial obligations, social development, and environmental protections. It strongly advocates for transparency, the avoidance of stabilization clauses, and the use of domestic courts for dispute resolution to protect the national interest and ensure long-term project viability.

The report argues that conservation initiatives frequently violate the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, despite an increasing international legal consensus on their protections. It asserts that responsibility for upholding these rights extends beyond states to include international organisations, businesses, and NGOs. The authors analyse a vast array of international instruments and find that while normative trends are moving toward greater recognition of rights, enforcement and redress remain significant challenges. The document concludes by suggesting the creation of core standards, stakeholder guidance, and potentially a dedicated global grievance mechanism or 'Roundtable on Ethical Conservation' to ensure just conservation practices.

The document analyzes the evolving energy partnership between the US and South Africa, framed by the US's shift toward energy independence via shale gas and its 'Power Africa' initiative. While South Africa is interested in the US model for shale gas and renewables, the briefing argues that South Africa must remain cautious regarding hydraulic fracturing due to severe water constraints and infrastructure gaps. It highlights the US-South Africa Strategic Dialogue as a mechanism for cooperation on clean energy, carbon capture, and hydrocarbon development, while noting that US initiatives in Africa have targeted a limited number of countries.

The research paper examines whether the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) has led to governance improvements in member states using the 2014 Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG) as a benchmark. The author finds mixed results: while 10 of 17 reviewed countries showed some progress—most notably Rwanda—others like Mali and Benin experienced regression. The paper concludes that there is no obvious direct positive correlation between APRM reviews and improved IIAG scores, largely because member states have failed to systematically implement the required National Programmes of Action (NPoA). To improve, the author recommends strengthening peer pressure, increasing secretariat support for national planning, and enhancing civil society engagement to ensure domestic accountability.

The report provides a guide for city practitioners to build climate resilience in African cities, specifically focusing on the challenges of informality and inequality. It proposes an eight-step process for climate compatible development that integrates climate dynamics with socioeconomic and political dimensions, ranging from developing a vision and mapping linkages to the informal sector to assessing vulnerabilities and tracking progress.

The document analyzes Côte d’Ivoire's efforts to relaunch its regional diplomacy under President Alassane Ouattara following two decades of instability. It highlights the country's economic strength as a primary asset and its goal to become an emerging economy by 2020. Key challenges include the need for security sector reform, national reconciliation, and the professionalization of its diplomatic corps to better align with the integration goals of ECOWAS and UEMOA.

The document highlights the lack of a comprehensive coastal climate risk policy in Ghana and argues for the integration of community knowledge and multi-stakeholder engagement to achieve effective coastal resilience.

The New York Declaration on Forests Action Agenda provides a framework for governments, companies, indigenous peoples, and multilateral institutions to combat deforestation. It highlights significant progress, such as Brazil's 71% reduction in deforestation by 2013 and the adoption of zero-deforestation policies by major palm oil traders covering 60% of global trade. The agenda details specific roles for stakeholders, including the implementation of the Warsaw Framework for REDD+ and the commitment of indigenous peoples to protect 400 million hectares of forests. It also notes financial commitments from developed nations like Germany, Norway, and the UK to provide predictable REDD+ financing.

The paper examines the impact of Chinese resources-for-infrastructure (R4I) swaps on the 'resource curse' in Africa, specifically analyzing mechanisms like price volatility, Dutch disease, rent-seeking, and political conflict. Through case studies of countries such as Angola, the DRC, and Ghana, the author finds that R4I swaps are neither inherently harmful nor a panacea; their developmental impact depends on the capacity of host government institutions to manage risks and opportunities.

The Tanzania Social Action Fund (TASAF) developed a simulation game to communicate the complexities of its productive social safety net (PSSN) program to rural farmers. This tool was designed to help farmers understand conditional cash transfers and how PSSN participation manages rising drought risk. Following tests with over fifty farmers, TASAF adopted the game in 2012 as the primary extension tool for a national rollout targeting 13 million Tanzanians living below the poverty line.

The document details a project led by the Regional Institute for Population Studies (RIPS) at the University of Ghana to build coastal resilience through community-based reciprocal learning and the CRiSTAL tool. It highlights the critical need to integrate local knowledge into national policy, as Ghana's existing top-down planning lacks local ownership and specific district-level implementation plans. Key achievements include the creation of district-level contingency plans and a community-based climate change adaptation fund in Totope. The study argues that long-term resilience requires decentralization, multi-stakeholder engagement, and the empowerment of vulnerable populations to lead their own survival strategies rather than relying on disaster relief.

The report examines corporate governance across six SADC countries, finding a significant gap between the adoption of formal legal frameworks and their practical implementation. While South Africa and Mauritius possess sophisticated systems, others struggle with rudimentary architectures, corruption, and poor infrastructure. The author argues for a principles-based approach to governance that facilitates rather than restricts business growth, particularly for small and medium enterprises.

The document highlights the threats climate change poses to Belize's coastal ecosystems and the need for resilient economic development. It introduces a 'triple wins matrix' methodology to identify policies that balance economic growth with climate concerns, arguing that the protection and conservation of mangroves in Belize can achieve these simultaneous goals.

The document identifies significant productivity gaps in Africa's oil palm sector compared to Southeast Asia, citing low yields and inefficient extraction. It proposes closing the yield gap, improving oil extraction rates (OER), and implementing outgrower schemes to reduce dependence on imports. The author argues that capturing downstream value, such as biodiesel and oleochemicals, requires private sector investment facilitated by government land reforms and the establishment of a marketing board to ensure quality standards for export markets.

The paper examines electoral management in Benin, Cape Verde, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sierra Leone, highlighting a trend toward independent or hybrid EMB models. It identifies critical challenges including the high cost of elections, executive interference in appointments and tenure, and the complexities of electoral dispute adjudication. The author argues that the effectiveness of EMBs is often undermined by a political culture of impunity and zero-sum politics, despite formal legal guarantees of independence.

The document argues that while climate change threatens agro-value chains and the financial institutions that support them, the banking sector's integration of climate risk remains limited. It highlights the potential for innovative finance models and information and communication technologies to reduce vulnerability, using the coffee value chain in Uganda as a primary case study. The authors recommend that banks explicitly integrate climate risk into management strategies, incentivize adaptation through climate-proofed instruments, develop new products via partnerships, and target financial services toward women.

The research examines the potential for a 'resource curse' in four African nations soon to become oil-dependent. Using a game-theoretic model and the concept of 'limited access orders,' the author argues that oil rents typically disrupt political incentives, undermining economic performance and potentially destabilizing the state. While Ghana is identified as a potential exception due to its robust democracy and lower projected oil-to-tax revenue ratio, the other cases show higher risks of repression or predatory behavior. The paper concludes that radical policy interventions like 'cash-to-citizen' transfers are implausible because they ignore the domestic political equilibria and patronage networks that maintain stability.

The document examines the evolution of democratic governance in Africa from the OAU era to the AU era, focusing on the APRM and ACDEG. It argues that while the continent has shifted from 'politics of the bullet' to 'politics of the ballot', significant challenges remain, including 'illiberal democracies' and slow implementation of governance reviews. The author advocates for stronger synergies between the African Governance Architecture (AGA) and the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA), increased domestic funding for National Programmes of Action (NPoAs), and a balanced role for non-state actors to prevent 'state capture' of these initiatives.

The research paper outlines a strategy for 'climate compatible development' in African cities, which integrates climate change adaptation and mitigation with urban development. It emphasizes the need to work with informality and inequality, as a large portion of African urban growth occurs in slums. The authors propose a vision for 'adaptive African cities' and provide a practical eight-step model for community-based development, ranging from visioning and vulnerability mapping to the prioritisation of adaptation options and the tracking of outcomes.