ADDIS ABEBA – The African Union (AU) Declaration on Land Issues and Challenges, the AU Declaration of committing 2010 – 2020 as the African Women’s Decade and the AU 30 per cent target for documented land rights in women’s names by 2025, are important messages from leaders on the continent that empowering women through tenure security is a necessary condition for equity and the socioeconomic and agricultural transformation of Africa.

African countries must act faster to purge corruption in the land sector by harnessing technology and innovation, African Development Bank Senior Vice President Charles Boamah urged on Monday.

Boamah, who was speaking to policymakers and stakeholders at a conference on Land Policy in Africa in the Ivorian capital, Abidjan, also called for the deployment of more financial and human resources to land policy development, “especially in rural areas and among the most vulnerable, including women.”

Next week the Conference on Land Policy in Africa - Winning the Fight against Corruption in the Land Sector: Sustainable Pathway for Africa’s Transformation, will take place in Abidjan. The African Union recognises that corruption is a key factor hampering efforts at promoting governance, socio-economic transformation, peace and security, and the enjoyment of human rights in the Member States.

Two weeks after Malagasy Forest Landscape Restoration experts came to Yaoundé, their Cameroonian counterparts visited Madagascar to intensify their South-South exchange on Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR) in Africa.

The African Union Development Agency (AUDA) pilots targeted exchanges between member countries of the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100) to foster peer-learning on FLR.

In mid-November, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) hosted a summit in Nairobi, Kenya to rally the political will and financial commitments urgently needed to implement the goals of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) adopted by 179 governments in Cairo.

The effect of losing intact tropical forests is more devastating on the climate than previously thought, researchers report.

A new international study reveals that between 2000 and 2013, the clearance of intact tropical forests led to much higher levels of carbon being emitted into the atmosphere than first believed—resulting in a 626% increase in the calculated impact on climate.

Power relationships, local knowledge and transparency in integrated landscape approaches

Integrate knowledge holders. Understand power relationships and address imbalances to ensure marginalized groups are heard. Promote transparency in decisions and actions in landscape restoration work. Address governance and ensure transparency in motives and “political visions.”

At the Women Deliver conference in Vancouver in June, Dr. Monica Mhoja made an impassioned case for land ownership rights for women.

"We understand that land is life," Mhoja, the Tanzania Program Director for Landesa, told the crowd gathered. "Land is dignity. Land is destiny. Land is hope. Land is empowerment of women and equality. And land is power. The power to prosper. To thrive."

One of the fundamental resources that is essential for the development and sustenance of people in Africa is land.
Land is very important because it forms the basis of agricultural production in the sub-region.

However, it has been very difficult for women to access land in the country, and the continent in general due to multiple issues most of which are embedded on patriarchy as a system which breeds gender inequality.

The NGO Human Rights at Sea has proposed amendments to the draft agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea currently under development. 

The climate crisis threatens to dramatically alter people's relationships with the land on which they rely. Meanwhile, many climate solutions are themselves land-intensive: solar and wind energy, carbon dioxide sequestration, and finding places for people displaced by climate change to live and grow food. The result is an ever-increasing competition for land, as well as governance and justice challenges that are both intractable and inextricably linked.

The kids are not all right. For more than a year, young activists have been staging climate strikes around the globe. They are about to get much bigger. Sparked by 16-year-old Greta Thunberg in Sweden last year, the school walk-out movement has spread to what organizers hope will be millions of children and adults around the world protesting for action to end the climate crisis.