Harold Liversage has over 30 years of experience in land and natural resource governance issues, mainly in Eastern and Southern Africa. This includes working with and for governments, international development agencies and CSOs in: project and programme management; multi-stakeholder consultation and negotiation processes; institutional development and capacity building; participatory research and planning; and resource mobilization. He has extensive experience in integrating land governance measures into government rural poverty reduction programmes.
He is currently employed as a Lead Land Tenure Technical Specialist for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) based in Rome. In this capacity he is responsible for assisting IFAD to better address land and natural resource tenure security issues in the projects and programmes it supports. This includes supporting IFAD’s engagement in regional and global initiatives such as the Africa Land Policy Initiative, the “Voluntary Guidelines for the Governance of Tenure” and the Global Donor Land Working Group.
Prior to joining IFAD in 2004 he worked in the early 1990s for the Association for Rural Advancement (AFRA), a land rights NGO based in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and then as a Land Reform Programme Coordinator for the South African Government’s Department of Land Affairs from 1996 to 1998.
Subsequently he worked as a Land Tenure Adviser for the Zambézia Agricultural Development Programme in Zambézia, Mozambique from 1998 to 2002, working with the Government’s provincial land administration service and a national land rights NGO (ORAM) on securing rural communities’ land rights and improving procedures for granting land concessions to outside investors.
From 2002 to 2004 he was contracted by DFID to work as a Land Policy Adviser to the Ministry of Lands and Environment in Rwanda where he assisted with the formulation of the country’s land policy and law and associated implementation strategy.
The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a specialized agency of the United Nations, was established as an international financial institution in 1977 as one of the major outcomes of the 1974 World Food Conference. The Conference was organized in response to the food crises of the early 1970s that primarily affected the Sahelian countries of Africa.
For rural people, especially low-income rural people, land and livelihood are one and the same. Access to land means the opportunity to earn a decent income and achieve food and nutrition security, and it can also pave the way for access to social benefits such as health care and education. A lack of secure land access, on the other hand, can disempower rural people and expose them to the combined threats of poverty, hunger and conflict.
This blog builds upon Harold Liversage's presentation during the Global Land Tools Network's seventh partners meeting, which took place in Nairobi, Kenya from 23-27 April, 2017. Harold Liversage is currently the Chair of the Global Donor Working Group on Land.
