By Rosa Olokweni, Gender and Land Champion, WOLTS Project Tanzania
Before HakiMadini and WOLTS came to Mundarara, it was as though women in our village were sleeping. None of us was aware of our rights to land, many of us were mistreated by our husbands and we never spoke in meetings.
It was good land. Before the company’s arrival in 2011, the people of Ngovokpahun village had used it to grow cocoa and other cash crops to help them pay for their children’s education. But when Italian Agriculture offered to build them a school, health center, and roads, provide them with employment, and pay rent, leasing out the land seemed like the wiser option. The company drafted the agreement and the landowners signed.
In a recent episode of the podcast Uncharted Ground, host Jonathan Levine spoke with Namati about building a global environmental justice movement. You can find it on any major podcast platform or listen to the episode (and access the full transcript) on Stanford Social Innovation Review's website. A recap of the episode, written by SSIR, is below.
“This plot is not for sale” are the six words you will find, marked on a lot of properties and plots of land in Uganda. The words are meant to ward off quack land or property brokers and conmen. Most of the cases handled in courts in Uganda, and Kampala in particular, are fraud-related cases (like selling land while the true owners are away using counterfeit titles) and land transaction fraud (when fake land titles are obtained and sadly some officers in the land registry are involved).
Hundreds of land practitioners from around the globe gathered and came together at the 2019 LANDac Conference at the beginning of July with the purpose of looking at land governance from the lens of transformation and in particular, how to support transformation that works for people and nature. The conference delved into questions such as the long-term dynamics around land, water and food production and promising concepts and tools for building learning and knowledge building about these dynamics.
Deciding whether or not to allow an investor to use community lands and natural resources is one of the most important decisions a community can make. Namati and the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI) have published two new guides to help communities prepare for interactions with investors and, if they so wish, negotiate fair, equitable contracts. These guides are the first of their kind.
