Empowerment of youth through strengthening their land rights knowledge and research capacity: evidence from Eastern and Southern Africa

Africa is a continent of youth. However, its high rates of youth unemployment linked to high levels of landlessness suggest a close correlation with youth poverty and access to land. This paper presents the perspective of an approach for capacitating youth through research on land and natural resource tenure in Eastern and Southern Africa. The capacity development effort involved action research initiated by the Global Land Tool Network (through Association of African Planning Schools) with youth researchers to conduct research and produce country reports on land and natural resource tenure. How this approach paved the way to empowerment of the youth—through strengthening their land rights knowledge and research capacity—is the focus of this paper.