| Land Policy Forum Recommends Strong Support for Homegrown Policies. 21 January 2008 (ECA) - The consultative workshop on land policy in Eastern Africa concluded Friday 18 January, with a call to African governments to contribute at least ten percent of national budgets to the land sector. Participants noted that while this may seem like a high investment, considering that land disputes are at the centre of many conflicts, it is a small price to pay in the long run. While appreciating the contribution that development partners are making to the formulation of land policies, the workshop stated that land policies have a higher chance of successful implementation if they are home grown and owned; and it the policy development process is consultative and inclusive with the active involvement of civil societies. It called for capacity building for national institutions to equip them to undertake the important task of land policy development and implementation. Other key recommendations from the workshop include: The need to recognize and support traditional land dispute resolution mechanisms, which are more accessible to the poor; the need to reconcile customary and indigenous land tenure and use systems with statutory systems; and the importance of knowledge management and lesson sharing to supporting development, implementation and monitoring of land policies. The workshop further noted that monitoring is crucial to the effectiveness and efficiency of land policy formulation and implementation. It therefore recommended that monitoring systems should: identify the appropriate institutions in charge of monitoring, including regional economic communities; use existing institutions at the national level; and diversify monitoring activities to local, national and regional authorities as appropriate. In his closing remarks, Mr. Philibert Afrika, director for operations policy and compliance at the African Development Bank, thanked all participants for their hard work and stated that the workshop had clearly achieved its objectives, which were: to identify key land issues in the eastern African region; identify gaps in policy and practice and explore mechanisms for addressing them; and to identify & provide inputs for revising the draft regional document on land policies. The next subregional workshop on land policies will take place in West Africa in March. The final continental report is due to be handed to the summit of African heads of states and governments in January 2009. |
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