A Land for Life delegation of goverment and civil society representatives from Liberia, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso and Ethiopia participated in a learning exchange in Uganda on government and civil society partnerships on land governance. Beside participating in interesting discussions and a field trip, Welthungerhilfe/Land for Life organized a panel discussion on the sustainability of partnerships.
“Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships play an important role in advancing sustainable and suitable land governance, it supports the government through sharing responsabilities to achieve political pledges made on land governance”. With this statement, the prime minister Robinah Nabbanja of Uganda opened a week of exchange and learning in Kampala.
The week was intended to focus on a very specific form of partnership: the collaboration between the government and civil society organizations.
for a successful, effective and fair solution to land issues, it is essential that the government and civil society work together. Civil society has access to the grassroots level and the population, understands the problems and needs and has structures to successfully implement measures at a decentralized level. However, they often lack the resources, capacities, power and mandate to influence policies and promote their implementation. The government relies on the expertise and structures of civil society to pursue effective land policy, often with insufficient resources.
In practice, cooperation is often hampered by a lack of trust, power imbalances, differences of opinion or poorly defined roles. This issue is shared by civil society and the government in Uganda, as well as many other countries around the world. This is why civil society and political actors from over 35 countries have come together in Uganda to explore how partnerships can be designed effectively and successfully. Jointly organized by the Ministry of Lands, Housing & Urban Development, the International Land Coalition (ILC) and the Netherland Enterprise Agency (RVO), the exchange from June 9-15 included field visits, discussion of the preliminary study on the topic, as well as numerous breakout sessions where practitioners from around the world shared their experiences.
For Land for Life, this was a good opportunity to learn more about the topic, share their experiences, network and strengthen the partnership between government and civil society in the Land for Life countries. Two people, a tandem from government and civil society, from each of the LfL MAPs, traveled together to Uganda to represent Land for Life and their MAP at the Learning Week.
Part of the trip was a field visit to Dokolo, a region particularly affected by land conflicts. Here there were conflicts between a community that relied on cattle breeding and agriculture in the local forest area. After the local government signed a contract with an investor for teakwood and the investor opened a timber plantation in the forest, the communities’ livestock grazing in the forest was confiscated and the residents had to pay rent for their agricultural land. A project supported by GIZ facilitated dialog and rapprochement in the conflict and opened doors for compromise. Even though not all problems have been solved and the power imbalance remains, all participants agreed that a start has been made towards dialog, peaceful resolution and mutual benefit from the forest project.
Back in Kampala, the exchange of ideas continued, and Welthungerhilfe/Land for Life organized a panel on the sustainability of multi-stakeholder partnerships. During the preparations for the third project phase of the Land for Life initiative, the question of what is needed to make the MAPs fit for the future and ensure their long-term success was examined in depth. The strategies of the third project phase are based on the idea that MSPs generate sustainability from a mutually dependent triad of resources, relevance and capacities. The panel discussed these considerations further.
Blaise Bama, coordinator of the Plateforme Multi-Akteurs sur le Foncier (PMAF), the MAP supported by Land for Life in Burkina Faso, shared his experiences and strategies on the topic of sustainability. The PMAF has developed a resource mobilization strategy focuses on strengthening internal and external communication to increase stakeholder motivation and the relevance of the MSP. The MSP has also institutionalized itself to increase the ownership of the stakeholders and enable them to raise funding independently.
Kearabetswe Moopelo from the ILC-supported MSP (NLC) in South Africa spoke openly about the challenges of a struggling MSP. Continuity of resources, knowledge and actors is particularly important to lead the processes successfully and in the long term, something she struggles with in her context.
Stanley Toe, Executive Director of the Liberia Land Authority, provided a government perspective on the topic. He clearly acknowledged the importance of the LfL-supported MSP in Liberia and emphasized that the government must also contribute to the sustainability of the processes. He highlighted the competition for public funds, even within the government, and the need for sufficient budget allocation for land governance and partnerships from the highest political level, as well as international partners and cooperation.
Finally, Dr. Ingeborg Gaarde, Land Tenure Expert at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), who has accompanied numerous partnerships on land reform in different countries, shared her lessons learned. She emphasized that the sustainability of MSP processes is often already determined in the establishment phase of the MSP. Does the MSP process have the buy-in of the government? Is the MSP inclusive and formalized enough to create ownership by the actors, but flexible enough to allow new actors to join at any time? Does the MSP have a clear mandate, and is it organized around a specific process? These questions are key to ensuring the long-term success of the processes.
The week in Uganda was instructive for the Land for Life delegation and provided a strong basis for further refining Land for Life strategies, making or strengthening connections, learning from others and gaining motivation to further develop partnerships for people-centered land governance in Land for Life countries.