Sam Moyo African Institute for Agrarian Studies (SMAIAS) strives for agrarian transformation in Africa that supports equitable land rights, sustainable land uses, food security, and economic development. Headquartered in Harare, Zimbabwe, the institute was founded in 2002 to advance radical agrarian reforms in Africa through multi-disciplinary social science research, training, policy dialogues, networking, and information dissemination. The institute interacts with various groups that include governments, academics, civil society, and social movements to enhance the livelihoods of marginalized rural groups, while drawing comparative experience and solidarity from the wider Global South.

SMAIAS aims to improve the capacities to attain equitable and sustainable agrarian transformation through developing and advocating for equitable agrarian policies that promote sustainable land use and challenge western imposed development models and resisting land dispossession of small-scale farmers. Since 2009, the institute has hosted an annual Agrarian Summer School which has brought together young and senior scholars, researchers, and activists from across Africa and the Global South to reflect on contemporary agrarian issues.

SMAIAS’ work contributes to strategies, solutions and methodologies that advance self-determination by generating and packaging theoretical and practical approaches to agrarian transitions through reports, policy briefs, journal articles and monographs. The institute has facilitated the publication since 2012 of an international journal Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, published by SAGE publications, and has created a forum for intellectual innovation and exchanges among activists and scholars from the Global South.