Kigali — President Paul Kagame returns Monday to the serene countryside of Rwanda's Kayonza and Kirehe districts to oversee an on-going land distribution exercise.

The president's 'knightly' gesture comes in just weeks after the United Nations UN warned of Rwanda's rankings as a country with one of the highest population densities in Africa

While the current Rwandan population is at 8.2 million with a high fertility rate of 5.8 children per family, the population is growing at an annual rate of 2.9 per cent as the land resources remain the same. Ninety per cent of Rwanda's households rely on subsistence farming.

However with such a high fertility rate, the livelihood of the population is largely threatened.

Mr Kagame's intervention in the land re-distribution exercise also comes in handy as some of Rwanda's returning refugees from the neighbouring countries particularly Tanzania and Uganda are increasingly contributing to land shortages. Even with Rwanda's population pressure, the USAid estimates that 55 per cent of the farms are less than one half hectare in size, and competition for land is an underlying source of conflict.

Until the president's intervention, land ownership by some of Rwanda's elite society has also greatly contributed to creating an extremely precarious future to the national economy.

The country is geographically a small landlocked country as compared to its neighbours.

This week the president intends to extend the four days' tour he started on Tuesday last week, visiting the Eastern Province, one of the most troubled parts of the country, where an estimated 80 per cent or more of cases coming before the prefect's courts are concerned with land.

Mid last year

His mission is still to oversee a continued re-demarcation and re-distribution exercise that he initiated mid last year.

Mr Kagame is convinced that land sharing could also bridge the gap between Rwanda's rich and the poor and establish a land system that is secure for all Rwandans a divide that the 2001 National Unity and Reconciliation Commission (NURC) considered to be main obstacle in building lasting peace in the country.

In Africa more than 30 percent of the land is jointly held by members of a group or community, making common property rights as important as individual rights. In many developing countries, giving individuals title to land has worked well. In Africa, however, titling has led to a weakening of land rights, especially for women and pastoralists, because so much of the land is held in common.

In Zimbabwe for example land rights issues have been the sole cause of conflict amongst the different ethnic group and the white settlers. Though Rwanda officially adopted a national land policy in February 2004 it was until September 2005 that a national land law came into effect.