August 2025

The LandMark platform was recently updated to add more information about national land tenure and property laws in the dataset “Indicators of Tenure Security in National Law”, which can be found in the left-hand layer panel under “National Level Maps.”This global dataset was first produced for LandMark in 2015, and this version incorporates updated information for 53 countries in Africa.

About the Indicators

The “Indicators of Tenure Security in National Law” dataset is characterized by ten indicator questions that assess the security of land tenure for Indigenous Peoples or local communities in a country’s national laws. Given that some countries have laws that apply differently for Indigenous Peoples and local communities, there are subcategories for “Indigenous Peoples’ Land and Resource Rights” and “Local Communities’ Land and Resources Rights.”

The ten indicators and questions listed in Table 1 were identified as the most important to assess the strength of laws in recognizing Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ land and natural resource rights. And each of the indicators and questions in Table 1 were evaluated according to the scoring criteria presented in Table 2.