The University of the Western Cape’s (UWC) Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (Plaas) celebrated its formal recognition as an institute by the university last month.
Known until recently as the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies, it has been researching land reform, poverty and development in rural Southern Africa since 1995.
As a partner of government and civil society and through its role as a critical monitor of policy processes relating to land reform, natural resource-based livelihoods and agrarian change, Plaas has promoted an integrated understanding of rural and urban poverty.
It has also helped to design policies aimed at reducing the exclusion and marginalisation of millions of people in Southern Africa.
Plaas has grown substantially in the past 13 years and is now a recognised centre of interdisciplinary research activity. UWC announced last month that its decision to confer institute status is a recognition of Plaas’s contribution to applied research in its field.