News on Land

Nitidae, l’Observatoire National du Foncier Burkina Faso (ONF-BF), Oxfam Burkina Faso and the Netherlands Enterprise & Development Agency (RVO) are excited to announce their partnership for a LAND-at-scale project in Burkina Faso. Starting this year, the project will run for three years focusing on strengthening land governance for women and youth for increased food security, focusing on the Liptako Gourma region.

Burkina Faso’s land challenges

• Armed men, including two dressed in police uniform, attacked the home of Congolese lawyer Timothée Mbuya earlier this month and told family members they were sent to kill him.
• Mbuya is also facing a defamation lawsuit after publishing a report alleging encroachment of a protected area by a farm owned by former DRC president Joseph Kabila.
• Campaigners say both the lawsuit and the violent assault on the lawyer’s home fit a pattern of harassment of environment and human rights activists in the country.

The Netherlands Enterprise & Development Agency (RVO) is pleased to announce its collaboration with the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (EKN) in Bujumbura, ZOA, VNG International and MiPAREC for the implementation of a LAND-at-scale project in Burundi “Amahoro @ Scale - An integrated approach towards improved tenure security and land governance in Burundi”. The intervention will run until 2025 and has a budget of 2.8 million Euros.

Burundi’s land challenges

Felipe “Pipe” Henao is a young environmentalist from the small town of Calamar in southeastern Colombia. At the meeting point of the Amazon and Orinoco basins, it’s an area of abundant biodiversity and an important biological corridor to the Andes mountains.

The forest region was once only occupied by a few nomadic Indigenous communities, but has since seen waves of colonization and conflict, rubber and coca booms, FARC rebel occupation, and most recently, rampant deforestation.

The recovery of mangrove forests is key to climate change adaptation and to mitigating the effects of cyclones and floods, according to Maria Salazar of the Spanish International Cooperation and Development Agency (AECID).

According to a press release from AECID, a project repopulating and conserving the mangroves in Mozambique’s capital city, Maputo, is in its pilot phase under a programme run by the Covenant of Mayors in Sub-Saharan Africa (CoM SSA). The project is being co-financed by the European Union and AECID.

YET another Chinese miner, Monalof, is embroiled in a bitter wrangle with villagers in Binga who are resisting is bid to evict them from their ancestral lands.

The villagers were recently given a three months’ notice to vacate their homes and pave way for the establishment of a coal mine by Monalof.

This was revealed during a consultative meeting held between the villagers and management from the Chinese company last week.

Fifteen years later, and a billion dollars in funding, AGRA’s promise to double productivity and incomes for 30 million smallholder farming households by 2020 while reducing food insecurity by 50 per cent has not been fulfilled.

Location: Livestream on the GFFA website (https://www.gffa-berlin.de/en/). If you want to participate actively in the Global Forum on Food & Agriculture and receive information about all events, please register here: https://2022.gffa-berlin.de/#signup.html?

Languages: German, English, French

Organised by: FAO, GIZ, International Land Coalition (ILC) and Welthungerhilfe

‘Our heritage is not for sale,’ say Khoisan members as they legally oppose the development of what will house Amazon’s Africa operations headquarters.

15 years ago, when the Mozambican government signed the contract with VALE, almost everybody in Mozambique believed that coal would develop the country. This investigation exposes part of the destruction that VALE Moçambique is preparing to leave behind now that it has announced an agreement to sell its projects to Vulcan Minerals for US $270 million.

Public finance has a key role to play in agriculture. Instead of propping up corporate interests, it should learn from local producers

• PORTUGUÊS

19 January 2022, 3.13pm

African cities are rapidly urbanising and already experiencing considerable negative impacts of urbanisation. The production of urban spaces in African cities is frequently characterised as unsustainable.