General

The Women Land Rights for Inclusive Development and Growth in Africa (WIDGRA) is a project funded by the European Union (EU) under Lot 4 whose focus CSO#s contribution to the effective realization of women#s rights in Africa. Oxfam and its co-applicants (PROPAC and PLAAS) opted to focus on women land rights as a key component of the broader women#s rights issues. This is because secure land rights are the priority issue for all rural women in Africa. The project builds on the recognition that women#s rights to land are human rights that need to be upheld protected and promoted. Sadly, they tend to stay in action plans; and policies are hardly implemented due to lack of political commitments and patriarchal values that still predominate the continent. The project is guided by the following objectives: a. Project Objectives The general objective of this project is to ensure women#s access to and control over their land resources across Africa. The specific objectives are: - To hold the governments in the target countries and the Regional Economic Communities accountable on the implementation of relevant AU women#s land rights (WLR) instruments and other relevant WLR policies and laws # monitoring the actions they take. - To empower rural women#s organizations to analyse, document and disseminate evidence on pronounced cases of missing WLR and action against the discriminatory land tenure systems and threats originating from LSLBIs. - Pan-African civil society is recognized for their leadership, knowledge and advocacy capacity on WLR by governments, RECs, AU and WLR experts. b. Implementation The project is being implemented by Oxfam Pan Africa Program, PROPAC and PLAAS over a period of three years in eight countries: Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Togo and Tunisia. c. Outcomes It is envisioned that the project will achieve the following outcomes: Civil society organizations gain the capacity to effectively monitor Women Land Rights instruments, laws and policies; Annual status reports every year that are disseminated and used for advocacy to holdgovernments into account to living up to their women#s land rights commitments; Documented and verified data, testimonials, analysis and conclusion of all WLR evidence studies undertaken. These will be stored in an on-line data base, for the CSOs to access and refer to; Around 8,000 grassroots women (and male) community members trained on the WLR evidence study tool in the target countries; More scaled land tenure reform and LSLBI impact mitigation initiatives, building on the experiences in the communities where the evidence studies were undertaken and the effect they had to amplify women#s voices and gain a place at the decision making on the land tenure and LSLBIs; Approximately 80 trained CSO leaders with better transformative leadership and strategic advocacy skills and plans and commitment to improve the leadership and advocacy practice of their organization; A vibrant and effective advocacy practice that enhances the recognition of CSO#s knowledge and leadership on WLR and enables them to effectively push for more progress towards the goal of attaining at least 30% WLR by 2020.

General

Period 01.01.2017-31.03.2017: There is an increasing acceptance that sectoral approaches to land management are no longer sufficient. An integrated place-based rather than a sector based development, the so-called Landscape Approach is broadly definedas a framework to integrate policy and practice for multiple land uses, within a given area, to ensure equitable and sustainable use of land. An Integrated Landscape management aims to balance competing demands on land through the implementation of adaptive and integrated management systems that achieve coherence in policies and actions and maximize synergies across multiples sectors. The landscape approach combines social, ecological and economic perspectives and requires different qualities and competences. That#s way Oxfam NOVIBjoined the Landscapes for People Food and Nature initiative (LPFN) in 2016. This initative is a leading the discussion on Integrated Landscape Approaches at the international level. It is funded by the Dutch Ministry of Economic affairs (coordinated by EcoAgriculture) with additional funding from the Sustainable Green Growth department within the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The LPFN initiative supported the African Resilient Landscapes Initiative (ARLI), which was endorsed by the African Union in 2015 and is supported by the African Landscapes Action Plan (ALAP) and the AFR100 Initiative, provides a comprehensive framework to aggressively advance integrated landscape approaches across the continent. The funding willcontribute to the follow-up trajectory of a 3-day knowledge-sharing event for 150 landscape practitioners, that took place in Ethiopia at the end of 2016. Knowledge sharing workshops, exchange visits, and regional knowledge-sharing events, in which to compare and contrast experiences, and innovate new solutions to commonchallenges, have proven to be important aspects of learning and application of ILM techniques, but need a follow-up to be really effective. This grant will allow the LPFN initiative to further advance implementation of the African Landscapes Action Plan at different country levels. Period 01.11.2017-31.10.2018: Traditional approaches to property rights pose a major challenge for pursuing collaborative strategies for sustainable landscape management. Familiar issues of ownership and access rights to land, water, forests and other resources affect incentives for investment in sustainable management. But other issues also arise, like competing legitimate claims by different stakeholders who are affected by resource management by other users and uses. Therefore, expanded investment in integrated landscape approaches requires more nuanced understanding of the contextual factors and policy mechanisms by which tenure security can be assured, and sets of rights renegotiated among stakeholders. The multi-level, multi-sector, multi-actor governance required for integrated landscape management has generated a host of innovations around land and resource rights that need attention and better understanding. New social actors are becoming involved in resource management. New types of benefits for rights-holders, such as payments for environmental services and results-based payments for REDD+, are stimulating reformulations and expansionsinthe types of property rights that matter (differentiate use rights, control rights and authoritative rights). This initiative aims to develop a new analytical framework for understanding the issues of property and resource rights in the context of integrated landscape management, and to propose strategies to address them inform in more effective and equitable ways. The specific objectivesare to: 1) Develop a framework for understanding and analyzing issues related to land and resource rights within landscape mosaics where there is strong interaction and interdependencies among different land uses and land users; 2) Evaluate opportunities and tradeoffs associated with evolving rights; 3) Identify innovative solutions and potential strategies foraddressing key issues; 4) Identify priority research questions that should be explored moving forward.