Are rural Africans gaining more control over how their land relations and their land use decisions are decided? Is their access and input to institutions that manage and regulate these matters improving? Is it cheaper and easier to have land interests and transactions recorded, and what kind of rights do these institutions recognise? These are the kind of questions that this review of decentralising administration and management in sub-Saharan Africa seeks to answer. To do so, it closely examines the founding policy and legal texts guiding change in around twenty countries in East, West, and Southern Africa. Special attention is paid to where institutions and systems are being established, into whose hands and with what functions and powers. The extent to which these arrangements are accompanied by improving acknowledgement of historically vulnerable land interests is closely examined.