Over a billion people worldwide, predominately smallholder farmers, lack secure land rights, which are crucial for obtaining loans and providing the long-term visibility necessary for planning successful agricultural operations. Open data technologies enable mapping and access to information on land rights, which in turn can lead to more protection for community and smallholder farmers. However, across most contexts, information and data on land are largely inaccessible. Moving towards open and transparent land data and information represents a significant opportunity to provide the foundation for secure land and property rights, and ultimately improved food security and nutrition. 

As part of the GODAN Action project, the Land Portal Foundation leads the thematic area of Land Data, which aims to explore the potential of open data to improve sustainable land use planning, to facilitate access to justice, to address rural employment through and to build collective bargaining potential among farmers and the organizations that represent them. 

In this context, GODAN Action, represented by CTA and the Land Portal, and the southern African hub of NELGA, represented by NUST, have collaborated to provide capacity building which contributes to making data and information available discoverable on the internet. This will involve training on how to standardize the classification of content and resources, to improve the discoverability of and access to land-related information from all over the world. In addition, the workshop will cover what is involved in developing and managing open data repositories.