Despite recent advancements in land reforms across Africa, women and girls are still hugely disadvantaged, according to a recent meeting of experts. The 2020 Africa Land Forum (ALC), which took place online between 15 and 17 September, brought together 500 participants to explore the theme ‘Delivering on the African Union Agenda 2063 by Promoting People-Centered Land Governance in Africa’.

New Report delves into the State of Land Information (SOLI) in South Africa

Land governance in South Africa is a significant and complex political issue. The land information landscape reflects diversity of actors involved and extends from sophisticated statistical datasets and satellite imagery to local arguments for restitution based on oral records. 

The Land Portal is an independent non-profit based in the Netherlands, delivering a clear strategy to draw together reliable and trustworthy evidence for use in program development, advocacy campaigning and policy formulation for better land governance.

• The database was created by the Land Portal Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in the Netherlands.
• Currently, the database includes hundreds of land tenure projects from the Global Map of Donors and the U.S.

Uncovering South Africa's land information ecosystem

Land issues are at the heart of South Africa's struggles to overcome the legacy of over 300 years of white minority rule and apartheid. In spite of extensive land reforms to change the historic patterns and achieve justice in South Africa, land access, use, ownership and governance continue to mirror historic patterns of racial inequality.

The nature  and scale of investments in land in developing countries has divided opinion  many contexts, especially where local people depend on access to land for agriculture.

The Institute of Development Studies is gathering short stories that capture the diverse experiences of those who have interacted with the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition Programme (GODAN) and GODAN Action.

If you’ve engaged with GODAN over the last few years – as a network member, a participant on one of their courses or events, or by engaging with their publications, tools and applications – this is your last chance to tell them your story.

The Land Portal Foundation is seeking a dynamic and highly motivated Information Management Officer to support us in leading the information and data sharing needs of the Land Portal.  The Information Management Officer will ensure the development of information partnerships, lead the development of land information ecosystems, contribute to open data capacity building efforts, as well as promote and enrich land data standards. 

As data enthusiasts, we believe in the power that data holds and are strong proponents for democratizing information, making it easy to share and reuse. Despite this, data scientists and those working with data in general, often struggle to communicate how and why data are essential and potentially life changing.  The word data often conjures up notions of difficult to understand numbers or facts, information that is out of reach for the general population, meant for data scientists or those carrying out work that requires a certain level of expertise.