Land institutions from 11 countries shared their experiences, opportunities and challenges to advance collective land rights in Africa for local communities and indigenous people, focusing on women, youth and pastoralists; the biannual meeting is a unique opportunity for African national land institutions to engage with each other, as well as with technical and financial partners and civil society; the event is organized under the aegis of the African Network of Land Institutions for Collective Rights (ALIN), created in 2017 by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI).
More than 100 participants from 11 countries gathered in Arusha, Tanzania, this week for the fourth conference of national land institutions in Africa, which aims to secure customary land rights.
Participants produced a final declaration in which they strongly called on African national governments to increase financial and technical resources for national land institutions in order to implement progressive land policy reforms and help them secure the land rights of customary communities, particularly those of women and young people within these communities. Click here to read the Declaration.
The Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) organizes the event twice a year in collaboration with a host country and these national collaborators. This year was chosen as this year’s host through the Ministry of Land, Housing and Human Settlements Development, in collaboration with the Tanzania Land Alliance and the Tanzania Forest Conservation Group.
RRI is a global coalition of more than 150 organizations working to advance the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities and people of African descent in the Global South. Recent RRI research shows that Africa has seen the largest increase in legal recognition of collective land rights globally – a 12% increase between 2015 and 2020, but many of these laws have yet to be implemented. implemented.
In his opening remarks, the Deputy Prime Minister of Tanzania, Mr. Doto Mashaka Biteko welcomed the unique opportunity that ALIN offers to African countries and their land institutions to learn about the legal frameworks, institutions, systems and approaches to developing and implementing each other’s policies.
Mr. Biteko reminded participants that Tanzania was chosen to host this conference because its land rights legislation constitutes an exemplary model for Africa due to the recognition of customary rights of communities and the promotion of a community system for managing rural land ownership.
“It is also an opportunity for us to teach and learn from other African countries to see where we can improve our laws.”
For his part, Patrick Kipalu, Director of RRI’s Africa Program, declared: “Thousands of communities have obtained their property titles since the AU Commission, the Economic Commission for Africa and the AfDB adopted their land policy framework and their guidelines to secure land rights. None of these successes would have been possible without national land institutions.
They do the real work on the ground by translating policies into practice and holding governments to account their commitments. However, the implementation of most laws has been slow due to the challenges shared by our national delegates this week.We hope that ALIN has provided a place for reflection and peer-to-peer exchange to help them overcome some of these obstacles.”
In the same vein, Charles Meshack, Executive Director of the Tanzania Forest Conservation Group (TFCG), said: “Clear and transparent land rights frameworks are essential to protect the rights of local communities and promote responsible land use. African national land institutions must integrate climate considerations into land use planning, promote sustainable agriculture and create protected areas to combat climate change and preserve biodiversity. Community engagement, technology and collaboration international level are essential to succeed in this challenge.
Bernard Baha, national coordinator of the Tanzania Land Alliance (TALA), said: “Tenure security of communal land is essential to guarantee collective land rights. The law recognizes community land in Tanzania and we have experienced different programs which must now be strengthened. These include joint use plans for village lands and group rights which must be applied wherever customary communities own communal land.”
In his speech at the closing ceremony, Mr. Baha also thanked RRI on behalf of TALA for placing its trust in Tanzania for the holding of this important conference which has already been hosted by Ghana (2017), Madagascar (2019) and Togo (2021).
The conference also saw the participation of representatives of the African Land Policy Center (ALPC), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the African Development Bank (AfDB), the German development agency GIZ and the Tenure Facility, a global fund to support the implementation of progressive legal frameworks that recognize the land rights of communities.
Ms. Maria Saguti Mareelle, Head of Land Services at the AfDB, said in a discussion on how development partners are playing their role in promoting collective land rights: “Customary land rights have been identified as a challenge major for land investment projects in Africa, and the AfDB has developed guidelines to ensure that negative impacts on communities are minimized in all its projects.
Reading the final statement of the participants, Mr. Adams Manobah, Chairman of the Liberia Land Authority, hailed this regional gathering of African institutions as a celebration of “the spirit of African unity and the determination to protect and to strengthen its customary communities” for national and regional development.
For her part, Ms. Solange Bandiaky-Badji, coordinator of RRI and president of its secretariat, declared: “As governments and regional institutions in Africa increasingly recognize the security of land rights of indigenous peoples and communities local authorities as one of the essential drivers of social peace and sustainable economic development in Africa, we hope that this conference will offer a strategic opportunity to accelerate the realization of their commitments in the run-up to the United Nations Climate Conference in 2023 (CoP28). We hope that this gathering will enable national land institutions to consolidate political will,to mobilize resources and establish a roadmap to intensify the implementation of laws and policies in their respective countries.”