The GLTN’s Urban CSO Cluster of UN-Habitat and Habitat for Humanity’s Solid Ground campaign are convening a multi-stakeholder regional conference on land governance and management and kindly invite you to attend the upcoming conference titled Partnership for Action: Improving Land Governance and Management in Africa. The conference will present the opportunity for stakeholders from multiple sectors to come together to explore approaches to land governance towards inclusive and sustainable development in Africa.

The Conference will be convened in partnership with the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST), Habitat International Coalition (HIC), Huairou Commission, and Slum/Shack Dwellers International (SDI).

The Conference brings together civil society organizations, grassroots leaders, policy makers, parliamentarians, government officials, practitioners, academics and land sector specialists.  

The African Union Declaration on Land Issues and Challenges in Africa (2010) recognises the “centrality of land to sustainable socio-economic growth, development and the security of the social, economic and cultural livelihoods of people.” The declaration also calls for the prioritisation of land policy development in the region and the inclusion of civil society and the private sector in these processes. The declaration calls on all member countries to establish appropriate frameworks and to provide “activities to facilitate mutual learning” and policy development.

Land governance and management approaches are common to both rural and urban contexts. One of the key trends in Africa is the phenomenon of high rates of urbanisation and at the same time the declining public provision of serviced land and housing. The extensive urban poverty in Africa demands solutions focused on land and housing, and addressing land governance and security will require partnership across sectors as well as joint action on policy and programming.

With an overarching goal of developing greater understanding ofthe importance of tenure security and land, we will build broader capacities around policy-making and implementation strategies relevant to Africa. We will explore policy-making approaches with country case studies which will have particular resonance with policy makers and members of the Pan-African Parliament to ensure best practices, including principles of participation, evidence, and data driven approaches. The conference is designed to  present opportunities for the sharing of experiences of implementation of land governance methodologies and approaches to surface best practices through open discussion and platforms to explore and discuss land governance approaches, We will explore the continuum of land rights, fit for purpose, flexible land tenure policy approaches as well as GLTN land tools and strategies, in particular, the Social Tenure Domain Model and Gender Evaluation Criteria.

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You can find a summary of the conference outcomes in the Land Portal's Land Library here