Four Decades. 45 countries.
400 Million people.

Founded as the Rural Development Institute (RDI), Landesa’s work in more than 40 developing countries over the past four decades has improved individual lives, families, and communities.

As a result of our partnerships with governments and other development organizations, Landesa has helped bring secure land rights to more than 105 million families–representing well over 400 million people–in 45 developing countries throughout the world.

In fiscal year 2011 alone, we helped 3.4 million families receive documentation of their legal rights to land, legal aid and education of their land rights, or official recognition of their land tenure.

This transformation—from land insecurity or landlessness to secure rights to land—has boosted agricultural productivity in the developing world by billions of dollars per year, improved health, nutrition and school enrollment in hundreds of villages across the globe, and placed scores of billions of dollars in new land wealth in the hands of the rural poor.

Landesa’s Impact

Nation Years Families Benefited
South Vietnam 1970-73 ~1,000,000
Philippines 1972-80    ~161,000
El Salvador 1980-84      ~49,000
Russia 1992-2003 ~17,800,000
Kyrgyzstan 1992-2002     ~232,000
China 1996-present ~85,100,000
Moldova 1997-2000 ~522,000
Ukraine 2001-2006 ~3,450,000
India 2001-present ~1,105,000
Rwanda 2003-09; 2011-13 1,477,219
Kenya 2010-present 3,443
Uganda 2009-present 285
Ghana 2013-present NA
~110,900,947

Join us as we make the world a better place one acre at a time.

 

~ = Indicates an approximation to the nearest 1,000 households.