Since the rise of the modern corporate economy, land wealth has been relegated to a simple footnote when it comes to addressing wealth and wealth inequality.

The  4th India Land and Development Conference, set to start next week, invites a wide variety of individuals and institutions to engage in thought-provoking and interdisciplinary conversations and analyses.  More specifically, the Conference's theme Institutions, Innovations and Informations in Land Governance invites us all to think about us all to think about the role that information sharing can play in helping to ensure effective land governance.

When I was young, I was taught through my Maasai heritage that a woman is the property of her husband and is valued on the basis of how many children she can produce – and not by her education or economic success. 

I write this blog as our project team embarks on a fifth year of work on women’s land tenure security (WOLTS) with pastoral communities in mining-affected areas of Mongolia and Tanzania. Just before Christmas 2019, we were in Mundarara village in northern Tanzania. Exceptionally heavy rains made getting around much more challenging than usual. Locals travelling on foot had to make wide detours to avoid getting bogged down in waterlogged grazing land, and it took everyone much longer to get to the village primary school for our long-planned training day. 

A recent policy seminar at IFPRI presented an upcoming CGIAR publication on the topic  

Marc Wegerif, of the Human Economy Program within the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship at University of Pretoria, was presenting at the 2019 Conference on Land Policy in Africa (CLPA) in Abidjan Cote d’Ivoire on 28^th November 2019. The theme of the CLPA was “Winning the fight against Corruption in the Land Sector: Sustainable Pathway for Africa’s Transformation”.

Author: Priti Darooka [1] with contributions by Farida Akhter 

I want to thank IWRAW Asia Pacific for organising a two day strategic dialogue on Women Human Rights and Climate Justice. Some of the points shared here are points discussed at this dialogue in Bangkok in November 2019. 

Africa remains a net food importing region spending more than USD 35 billion annually on food imports, although this continent has about 65% of the uncultivated arable land left in the world to feed 9 billion people by 2050 (AfDB, 2016). Land tenure remains a major challenge across the continent and only about 10% of Africa’s rural land is registered. In Cameroon, in particular, land as an asset, an input or an income source is not equally possessed by any individual or household with respect to gender and place of living.

The session ”Exploring tools and approaches towards responsible youth and gender sensitive land governance and transparency in Africa” took place on November 27^th, 2019 in the framework of the Conference on Land Policy in Africa and was organized by the Global Land Tool Network and the International Land Coalition. Land is both a source of livelihood and life line for most communities in Africa and is considered a strategic social and economic resource for communities in rural and urban areas.

The land sector is increasingly being cited as a corruption hub. Many countries across the globe are grappling with land-related corruption that dates to the colonial years and which have metamorphosed into historical injustices and continue to be a source of conflict and violation of basic human rights. Cases of land grabbing, compensation-less expropriation, gender-based discrimination in accessing and ownership of land and related resources, illegal mining deals, bribing to access land administration services among others are not new in the lands sector.

It is my privilege to address you, on behalf of the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Dr. Vera Songwe, and welcome you to the 3rd Conference on Land Policy in Africa.

I would like to extend our gratitude to the Republic of Cote D’Ivoire and the African Development Bank for hosting the third Conference on Land Policy in Africa. As the host institution of the second land conference, we recognize the tremendous effort that goes into hosting this conference.

I bring you warm greetings from H.E. Mousa Faki Mahamat, the Chairperson of African Union Commission. It is my honour and pleasure to deliver this statement at the opening of the Conference on Land Policy in Africa. I salute the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Government of Côte D’Ivoire and all partners for hosting and successfully organizing the 2019 Conference on Land Policy in Africa.