The term land grabbing has recently attracted widespread, and sometimes agitated, attention, and its literature grows at exponential speed. At the same time, the concept remains little understood concerning both its meaning, magnitude and consequences and even who the grabbers are. Different attempts to define land grabbing appear to reflect ideological lenses and pre-defined positions rather than a genuine ambition to find out what is actually going on. Based on a comprehensive literature review, this article aims at presenting a more nuanced understanding of this disputed topic and therefore a less biased account of what land-grabbing and/or private investments in land represent.

* Questions many key assumptions about the efficacy of NGOs and civil society in development. * Provides suggestions on how to improve NGO performance and how NGOs can better link with local African initiatives and agendas.Beginning in the 1980s, sub-Saharan Africa witnessed a veritable explosion of NGOs and CSOs engaged in efforts to develop the subcontin­ent. Often praised for their commitment, flexibility, close contact with grassroots movements and marginalized groups, these organizations have become the darlings of donors and the UN system. During the same period, however, rural Africa has sunk deeper into poverty. The massive NGO engagement appears not to have made any meaningful progress. Snakes in Paradise breaks through the generalizations and neat theories to discover why these efforts have failed. Focusing especially on those local NGOs that are frequently overlooked by studies that cover the major international players, Holmén uncovers a NGO landscape that is considerably more ambiguous than the popular development literature would have people believe.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are major players in development aid today. It is widely believed they represent civil society and that, for example, the UN and the World Bank would be strengtened if NGOs were given a larger influence over policy formulation and development. As one can hardly speak of an NGO community, the issue of representation is far from easily solved. NGOs often compete for visibility, clients and influence, and representation leaves a lot to be desired. Hence, governments' and intergovernmental institutions' reluctance to accept immediately NGOs as partners, may be necessary for NGOs to become representative and, paradoxically, for strengthening civil society as well.

The overwhelming majority of people living in poverty are small-scale farmers and agricultural workers. To reach the UN Millennium Development Goals of halving world poverty by 2015, agricultural development and enhanced productivity must play a key role.Taking Sweden’s ”Policy for Global Development” as the point of departure, the purpose of this book is to highlight linkages and conflicts of interest between the developed and developing countries in agriculture, trade and environmental management, as well as the potential for enhanced coherence.

Increased pressure on ecosystems and enhanced competition over the use of natural resources makes it necessary to develop sustainable methods for natural resource management (NRM). However, NRM is a complicated issue. It involves numerous stakeholders, with different needs, resources and perceptions of nature. Stakeholder participation will necessarily be selective, based both on theoretical assumptions about who is a legitimate stakeholder and unevenly distributed power among stakeholders. Although stakeholder involvement is important, sometimes the theory appears to be rather blunt. It has been suggested that, since different categories of stakeholders embody different perceptions of nature, cultural theory could provide important additional criteria for stakeholder involvement. Based on field studies in Naivasha, Kenya, this paper analyses pros and cons of stakeholder analysis and investigates the usefulness of cultural theory for improved stakeholder analysis.