 Good morning, everyone. Good afternoon. Good evening, depending where you are connecting from. And welcome everybody to the webinar, the state of land data transforming Africa into a powerhouse of the future. Before I introduce myself, let me inform everyone that there is interpretation in French Portuguese and Spanish. So please click on the globe icon on the bottom of your zoom screen and select your language. Thank you, everyone. My name is Laura Meggiolaro. I'm the managing director, sorry, the land portal foundation. And welcome to this webinar, which is co-hosted by the land portal foundation GZ and the network for land governance in Africa, NALGA. In collaboration with our colleagues from the NALGA, the RCRMD, the government of Liberia. The land portal has convened this panel to discuss legal, technical and capacity challenges that may affect access to and proper use of land data and land information and its impact for Africa. In our we also showcase the state of land information research program by the land portal foundation and the importance of measuring information for the public good, as well as the work done by our colleagues from NALGA, the RCRMD, GZ, to work and build capacity in land governance in Africa. So a few logistical notes before we start. Feel free to use the chat to introduce yourself and the country where you are connecting from. This webinar is live stream and in several platforms and also recorded so you will also receive the recording later. Feel free to introduce yourself and also also ask questions but for the questions, please use the Q&A box to put any questions to our panelists. And we will try to address as many questions as possible at the end of the discussion. Let me now introduce our panelists today. So we have Dr. Mahu Solomon from the Liberian Land Authority. Mahu Solomon is the Assistant Director of the Serving and Mapping within the Liberia Land Authority. We also welcome Mahu. We have also Ken Kasera from the Regional Center for Mapping and Resources for Development, RCRMD. Kasera is the User Engagement Lead within the Center and has a background in Geo Information Science and Urban Planning and Management. Welcome Ken. We have Nanny Wischer and Nanny is the Lead of the GZ Project SLGA Strengthening Advisory Capacity for Land Governance in Africa, financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. Thank you for joining Nanny and welcome. And we have Sedina Mohamed Baye, Technical Advisor in the GZ Program Improving Land Management in Senegal. Thank you for joining Sedina. And last but not least we have Shartan Baye from the Land Porter Foundation. Shartan is the Land Information Specialist at the Land Portal and he leads the work on the state of land information. Welcome everyone and thank you for joining. So we will start by introducing access to information across Africa with few examples from Liberia and Senegal. We discuss about the challenges and lessons learned over the recent years. We also introduce our SOLE index with a has the aim of benchmarking access to land data and also look at the future and what the future holds for all of us. And we also welcome, of course, the questions from you. So we access to information is a is a rights. So is a rights in itself, but is also enabling a price. So is a right is necessary for the realization of other human rights. Article nine of the African Charter on human and people rights guarantees the right to every individual to receive information, but to further assist state parties to implement the rights outlining the charter. The African Commission on human and people rights has adopted soft law measures to further define these rights. So the African Commission has developed in particular the African model law on access to information, and this model offer very detailed and practical guidance on legislative obligations concerning the right to access information under the African Charter. And of course, every state implements has done the obligation to implement this soft law at the national level. Additionally, the African Union agenda 2063, which is the Africa strategic framework for inclusive sustainable development has identified a number of very high level goals, including democratic governance and institutional reform, transparency and participation, and some of these goals, in particular goal 111213 aligned very well with a sustainable development goal 16, which again emphasizes access to information. And I wanted to mention that to show that there are very high level actions and commitments at the continental level on access to information that frame access to information as an important driver for Africa development. And it shows really a continental high level commitment and leadership in this in this area. Let me now go to our panelists, and I will start with you Tommy, and I wanted to ask the lamp or has conducted has been conducting research on measuring documenting the state of land data across 17 countries in Africa. So while the lamp or continues these, these research and this work in Africa but also elsewhere now with the aim of scaling and developing also a state of land information index now that describe the global state of land data by 2025. What is the overall picture that can be derived from your research for the research that you've been conducting so far. How many countries are implementing the ambitious legal framework on access to information I was referring to. Over to you, Tony. Hi, good afternoon everyone. Thank you Laura. It's a pleasure to be here. I think it's difficult to say overall but I will just try and summarize you know what has been happening at the continental level. If we take into account that in 2000, only one country in Africa had an access to information law, and that was South Africa. The picture has since changed a lot. In 2013, the API law was adopted. And by 2023, we now see that 27 countries out of 54 in Africa have adopted an API law, and we also see that legislation is pending in another eight countries. So we're talking about 35 countries, more than half the countries in Africa, now having adopted a consistent legal framework for making access to information, not only a right, but providing the kind of necessary framework for implementing these kinds of rights and I think that's, that's significant, very significant progress. A lot more needs to be done. But I think on the positive side, this is an indicator of the importance of having this kind of continental guidance. We also see that another 36 countries have also adopted data protection laws during this time frame as well. And of course this is equally important and I want to stress that, you know, when we talk about access to information, we are not talking about free and unfettered access. We are talking about consideration for privacy and for ethical reasons that there's information that may not be made public and governments do need to consider that as well. And while no single instrument can be credited for this kind of progress, I think the model law is one initiative that has contributed to that. But we also see in some countries that have implemented an API law that tends to be better performance in terms of openness and access to data, although this is not completely uniform. But there are also countries that in the absence of an API law have already put in place other laws, other policies like a spatial data infrastructure policy and other mechanisms that can also contribute to opening up the space for making information available. So while that enabling framework is important, it sends a high level political message. We see that as it creates that momentum, the discussions happen and competencies start getting developed in the countries that we looked at most recently. Eight out of 11 countries have an API law where we've conducted the solely and the three that don't have it, two more have API laws pending. So we definitely see there where open data and access to information is a discussion, an API law is on the books, or it is in development. And the last thing that I want to say is that we also see other African institutions like the Development Bank, for example, implementing open access policies. And what is interesting in the Development Bank when they introduced their open access policy, five out of the seven reasons that they listen for introducing an open access data policy, five of those reasons relate to internal performance of their mandate. And I think it's important to emphasize that because it puts the opening up of information in the context of improved service delivery by those organizations that are opening up information. That's very interesting, Tommy, very interesting to hear that not only increase access to information is an engine for increasing civic action, but also public services and overall economic development. Thank you for this contribution, Tommy. I wanted now to hear from a regional perspective. First to Dr. Mahon, I wanted to ask you, Dr. Mahon Solomon, I wanted to ask you how how this African Union legal framework has inspired Liberia to consider opening up access to information. Liberia has been one of the first adopters. Liberia has been one of the first adopters of this access to information legislation. Yeah, I wanted to hear your experience of how access to information look like in Liberia, what has been achieved, how much progress have you done. Yeah, over to you, Dr. Mahon. Thank you and thanks to everyone for joining this webinar. Again, I'm Dr. Mahon Solomon, the Assistant Director for Survey and Mapping at the Liberia Learning Authority. I have a question about how the AU legal framework has inspired Liberia. Yes, I can speak to that, but I will now look at information from a general perspective, but I will try to narrate down to the lens sector for which I have my engagement. You may be aware, like what stated previously, Liberia Assigned Freedom of Information Act on September 16, 2010, and we have been implementing that and basically that has provided all personnel right to access public information. We are the Liberia Learning Authority, an institution which was newly birthed in 2016, and we, our Land Rights Act was developed in 2018 and then now we are implementing with the little support from the government and our institutional partners. We have been trying our best to see how we can make available land information for public consumption. As you all may be aware, land is the pool's main investment, so it should be adequately managed. We, we, at the moment, we are, we're supposed to have a Swedish partner. We are developing a system that has been started from a modular basis, that is, we're taking our land based information, we have been paper based to a digital environment. We ordered the fact that we want this in the coming year, we want to be able to showcase the information in the country where any landowner can be able to see available information so that before going into transaction, this way, we will be able to solve crisis before it really gets started. The reason for this is simple, my country is just from 13 years civil war, and one of the main reason for that was the kind of ugly land system we have. So we see this to be a paramount concern that we should be able to have our land information readily available to the public, so there should be transparency in any transaction, this will be able to bring some sanity to the land sector. Of course, yes, the AU legal framework inspired Liberia to come over our own FOI, the Freedom Information Act, and with the fact that we have that back of our mind, we want to be able to bring our land information so that each and every person in Liberia can have access to it and to avoid issue of any land conflict in the future. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr Mahum Solomon is very, of course we are very pleased to hear on the strong commitment towards access to information and transparency from the government of Liberia. I wanted to ask the same question to you and and ask you to provide some to zoom out as into West African Senegal in particular, how these African Union ambitious legal framework influence access to information in Senegal what has Senegal done to make information especially land information of course land data more accessible to people. Thank you so much, Laura. I'm happy to join this discussion about access to information in Africa and to share the experience of my country, Senegal. So the analysis of Senegal is context has revealed many challenges that can be summarized in in three points. First of all, the majority of citizens do not have access to information in general, and to learn information in particular. From a legal perspective, the absence of an access to information law is one of the difficulties shared by the various players involved. With this statutory information and financial information, the statue of whistleblowers, the mechanisms by which citizens and groups of citizens should be informed are all subject of intense debates in Senegal. The process is underway to adopt an access to information law under the leadership of the directorate of good governance, supported by technical partners such as the USA and GIZ. All drafting committee have been contributed to the adoption of draft law on access to information, but this is where the process has stopped. There is no access to information law in Senegal now. However, in practice, the difficulties linked to access to information can be related at several, several levels. Obviously, it must be known that since 2012 Senegal has adopted a court, a transparency court in the management of public finance as part of the reforms initiated within the YMO. So where's African Economic and Monetary Union. This court stipulates that governments must in particular make budget information available to citizens in a simple manner. There are not enough suitable formats and national languages are not used and the main information challenge that it is internet, even though all the country is not covered. So this is the challenge that many citizens are facing now. And the second point of my speech is citizens participation in this decision making process which is very limited. In legal terms, citizens are not involved in the decision making process at the national level. The only time where they can really participate during is doing the budget orientation debate. But even then, they cannot take the floor, they are just observers. In this respect, the open government partnership is an excellent opportunity to strengthen collaboration between the states and city society organizations. Many initiatives have been carried out since countries like Senegal joined DOGP in 2018, but in concrete terms, considerable efforts still need to be made mainly in land management. In practice, the progress toward open government encourages the states, in addition to collecting parliamentary opinions on the budget or on land, to go further by directly questioning citizens on the difficulties they are experiencing in a region, a community, etc. So the reality is that Senegal is not yet at this stage, although some ministries are developing their programs with stakeholders in many sectors. More need to be done to ensure that the voices of the people living in the most marginalized areas are heard so that their priority needs are identified and taken into account in public policies. And finally, land management is the neglected aspect of these initiatives. In the absence of a legal framework on access to information, it is impossible for citizens to obtain the necessary data under the best possible conditions. Today, the legal framework is not favorable and reforms underway do not take into account the issues of access to information, especially in the land area. That's why I sincerely hope that by joining our collective efforts, we will able to make an effective advocacy with our government. Thank you so much. And I'm ready if you have some questions. Thank you so much for your contribution and to highlight the many challenges that still remain, especially when it comes to participation in the public space and how important access to information is in that context. I would like to ask a question to Ken from the regional center of our management of resources now, and as a as a lead data and technology organization that is operating at the continental level and providing support to governments and other stakeholders in Africa on land, land data in particular. Ken RCR, RCMRD has been working at the continental level to support and advance the agenda on access to information in Africa. What has been doing? I mean, what are the most important program activities? Can you talk about, for instance, the data hubs that you have developed? How the work was done? And how did you organize yourself? Who did you work with? And yeah, just can you talk about a little bit about your work? Okay, thank you Laura and colleagues from where joining from. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening as well. My name is Kenneth Kasera. I thank you Laura for introducing us earlier on. I work with the regional center for mapping of resources for development, most commonly known as ASIMAD. And as the user engagement lead, and basically my role is to connect the user, the technology, so it's a pleasure to be here and thanks colleagues for joining today's webinar as well. As a center of excellence, we've supported the development of open data hubs, also training on digital data transformation, collection, processing and management and data portals as well. So we've done this for various countries and some are at the continental level, some at the regional level, but with the aim of making information accessible to various user categories. So we've worked with the GIZ, the Africa Land Policy Center, the GCI and the German firm that we helped build the NELGA platform together, the NELGA secretariat. So we did come up with an NELGA data hub that makes data available for universities for research. So it's on and the unique bit of this data hub is that it enables also others to produce data and also be part and parcel of data producers and have that capacity to upload the various information that we have. So the unique side of this data hub as well that it accepts both spatial and unspatial data. So for some of us who have publications, for some of us with articles, documents, this particular data hub enables us to be able to go and put the data in that place. The aim of this is to make data available for universities to be able to use. So both in Africa and beyond, and we welcome people to check on that as well. We've also done the Aoudan Air Pad with an on land data help desk. So we've done this for four countries in Africa where we're looking at bringing land data in one place. So we did that for Ghana, for Senegal as well, we've done that for Botswana and Namidia. And we hope with the support of Aoudan Air Pad, we'll be able to continue and also handle the rest of the countries. Sorry to mention that we've done for Uganda as well, I was forgetting Uganda. They were part and parcel of the land data help desk. With the World Bank, we are working on a Malawi land information system. So through the Ministry of Lands in Malawi, we've come together to establish a land information system for the country to enable data access and mostly data in terms of cadastra and administrative aspects of that data as well. With the European Union through GRC, we've done the Bioparma Regional Resource Hub that contains all the data that relates to biodiversity. So protected area management is also critical because land data also is also part and parcel of the land information and the data that can help in decision making. With the C4, we've also done an officer that is putting in place an observatory that can help people to gain access to forestry data. So for Mozambique, Botswana, Uganda, Kenya, with Tanzania as well, we put in place an observatory through and with assistance from C4 to help us do that. Also with the African Union Commission, we are working on a GMS and Africa that is the global monitoring of environment and security and Africa that focuses on wetlands, land degradation, and also on bringing those two elements together in a platform that enables us to share the services and the products that feeds into those three particular thematic areas. With the UN Habitat, we've done an approach that is most commonly used nowadays in the land administration and that is the fit for purpose approaches. So we encourage participatory approaches and they bring on board communities to be able to develop land data and this was done together with the UN Habitat. Important activities that we do in regards to all those projects that I mentioned is that we need to start and we're already doing something referred to as data inventory. So what this basically means is that we want to make data discoverable and one way of doing that is to be able to know what each institution has and the procedure for getting this data. And if we are able to tell where the data is and how we can get it, then it will be easy for us to get the access. So aspect of data discovery is a critical comment what we do in all those that we are mentioning. And we'll also go into as far as putting in place international conference that enables us to bring in on various players and possibly how do we link science policy and specifically landed policy and the data aspects as well is a critical component of this website. And so we welcome all the institutions that are willing to participate in this conference in August be able to also link back to us and we'll be able to share. So the activity, most of the times are based on the linkage to these countries is through the Ministry of Lands, the means of environment and times even the Ministry of Energy that feels it's important for us to be able to put in place data hubs that supports the information access initiative. And over to you Laura, thank you. Thank you, Ken. Thank you for this very interesting overview of all the work that your institution is doing. And let me, let me, let me take a question and address a question specifically to you. And it has was posted by Leonardo Rondo as a, I wanted to ask this question to you because you are an expert on user engagement and Leonardo rightly pointed out that beside this access to land data for the public consumption is very important to put the focus also on on use, on the use of data for decision support and policymaking. So, and this also of course comes with different challenges, you know, such as data integration or visualizations, you know, packaging, etc. So I wanted to ask you Ken, what our CMRD does, you know, to make data more usable, easier to consume by people or, you know, ready for decision making. Thank you Laura. It's a loaded question and thank you for that question as well. What the CMRD does is, first of all, we train and build the capacity of institutions in data transformation. What we've discovered in various member states, not only in the eastern and southern Africa part of Africa, but the Africa as a whole is that most of the information that we have are in hard copy by me in maps, and that they are kept somewhere and this data was kept somewhere and the most of the information about this to land is most of the time in hard copy. So CMRD is in the forefront of digitizing this data. So we build the capacity in terms of data digital data transformation. So how do we make them in soft, because if they're in soft copy, then it's easier for us to be able to share. And with various formats ready in place, we are able to bring it down to every user category. So we're able to tell and bring it down to a level of what should a farmer expect from land data. What should a policymaker, because all of us one point in time we make decisions, but how do we want the information to look like, and that is why we do analyze something referred to as the information flow. And what's the channel of the instrument that should be put in place for this data to be accessible. The data that we have, I'm sure that each of us will receive data, best can the format that we receive this information and even the instruments, the channels, the platforms, how are they usable. And that is why we brought on board the usability aspect. And so various users participate in the entire process as well as they're able to be able to use the final product. So user participation and engagement is something critical for the center as we move along with the aspect of training digit data transformation and also look at the policies. Yeah, the entire continent is on the first level, is putting in place a system that enables to be able to really do what we call the policy. Because the city in Africa and each country categorized it to various levels based on sensitivity. It's purely to some policies within the continent and I think we are grateful for the African Union for having this initiative to enable us to have a base in sharing data. So we train on digit data transformation, we train on formatting, we train on the entire data processing and possibly can be fed into the daily activities of each one of us in the various institutions. Over to you, Lyron. Thank you very much Ken. Thank you for responding to the questions and let me invite everyone to pose more questions using the Q&A button on your screen. Please put questions on for our panelists and I will address the questions. Let me now turn to Nanny, and the question for you Nanny is, so could you tell us more about strengthening advisory capacities for land governance in Africa, the SLGA and also the network of excellence and land governance in Africa, the program you're leading, which is a network of academic institutions and experts. So how this program and this network has been supporting Africa Union member states in building data capacity and improving access to information, Nanny. Thank you very much Laura and hello to everybody joining today's webinar. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, you already mentioned it, the strengthening advisory capacities for land governance and Africa project is a GIZ project, it's funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development with Germany. And we are very happy to have partnered with the African Union Commission and then more particularly also with the African land policy center, the ALPC and together with them and also the World Bank. We are very proud to have co-created the network of excellence on land governance in Africa, NALGA, the network that you have already mentioned, which is a network of at the moment more than 70 academic institutions across actually 40 African states. And that being said with this broad range of membership across the continent, of course, one of the objectives of NALGA is to support the EU member states in building the institutional capacity in building the knowledge, building the human capacity and also of course providing the data on everything related to land policies so that land policies can be developed in a sustainable manner that they can be implemented accordingly. And of course also from a monitoring point of view to see whether or not they are proving to be effective in the way that there should be. So how do we do that? The NALGA members, the academic institutions that we work with that we support, they conduct applied research, mostly of course to the imminent policy questions that we've seen. I mean, some of the other speakers have already outlined some of them. So, of course, one of the main areas is applied research, but beyond that, if we say we want to build capacities, we're also looking at providing trailer-made training. So if there is a particular ministry with a particular question and tier, I think it's very important to also look at data to say, okay, which kind of training needs do we need to access the data to actually then also use the data in a specific manner. So this is one of the ways that the NALGA partner institutions that we're working with is supporting the different member states in the different countries. And by doing so, I mean you have outlined it, we have the Agenda 2063 that we're contributing to, but most importantly also the AU Agenda on land. So just to give you one specific example we have, or the African Union has developed guidelines on curricula for land governance. And these, of course, are the ones that then also underline the importance of data. So when we support curricula development, we also do it in line with looking at, okay, the ARDA curricula is also touching upon this important issue of data availability and data processing. So I think that is also the main objective, of course, of our support as GIZ as the German Development Corporation to say, okay, what does it actually take to make evidence-based decisions on land issues? And here we see that land data is at the heart of it. So on all the issues, be it related to land policy development, be it related to land administration, land investments, land and agriculture, or land disputes, as also mentioned by Dr. Solomon before. We want sound decisions to actually be based on the right information, meaning the right data that needs to be there. And this is, of course, the angle that our project is supporting when supporting the NALGA network. Thank you. Indeed, thank you. Thank you so much NALGA for these useful contributions. Very, very important that information comes to the hand of those that need to make the right decisions. So thank you for that contribution. Let's move to the second part of this webinar. We've seen a very ambitious legal framework in place and implemented at different level and capacity in different geographical realities. We've seen important networks, important tech and data organizations now doing very important work across the continent in improving access to information, making it usable, supporting government. Let's look back at the recent work that has been done and the major challenges that are still there, but at the same time the main lessons that we learn from the past. I wanted to come back to you, Dr. Mahoum Solomon, and looking at Liberia. Liberia also signed up the open government partnership and is very committed to it. In the current three years action plan now has concrete commitments on open information and as well as improving transparency in the land authority in particular. And also there is an approved Access to Information Act. So in your, can you just share with the audience what has been your experience in engaging with such a platform. What have you been learning and what did and didn't work? Do you think is an important mechanism to increase access to information for the sector, for the land sector in particular? Okay, thank you Laura for that question. From our end of, from the government of Liberia, particularly the land authority, we will say the open government partnership is a good tool that could be used, that is being used to showcase our land information. And I will try to contextualize that and what we've done of late, we support from the World Bank and the Swedish government. First I will start with the World Bank, we were able to conduct series of awareness so that people in our rural past can have access to land information, can know about their rights to land, because that's given some level of security. So and as you may be aware, my country like Liberia has a high electricity rate, so an access to internet is kind of limited. So we tried to use traditional means, we were able to put out people in the field when do awareness, carry on awareness in our rural part of the country, going to the fact that we have the knowledge of the open government partnership with the government. So our people went in the field carried out aware the massive awareness within 15 political subdivision our country. Even though that was not a total success because the information did not reach to the depth of the entire country because of bar rules and other factor, but at least to a considerable standpoint we were to be able to show that our local people are aware of the land rights and their authority and their right to learn ownership. So coming back, so our Swedish counterpart also helped us because like I stated, my country Liberia has 30% land in urban area and the rest is in customary area. So with our knowledge of that we decided that we should be able to formalize the land giving ownership to our people. And how do we do that, the land authority as a regulatory institution cannot do that on our own. So we have CSOs working in these rural communities trying to formalize land and when I say formalize the land, try to bring ownership to them so I can be able to use it for transactional purposes. So now, and when they do this formalization, all the information is managed through a portal. We have been able to develop a portal with the support from our Swedish counterpart. The CSO entered data to that portal, and then all the CSO can see that we're overlapped so that different people can now work in the same area and of course completely much confusion. So we developed this portal from the support from the Swedish government and now CSOs and other land actors are using and working in the field, trying to ensure that our people have the ownership to land. What didn't work? It has been some challenges. You know, since the land authority came to being, it has been one government, but we know that financial constraint is one. We want to be able to have all our communities in Liberia formalize so that we can have that information transmitted to centralize location. And this issue about leadership turned over. We are approaching election, we know in African context, once there's a change of government, you have most of the technical people or a hell of institution be changed. New people will come in and that can lead to some drawback in implementing some policy issues. Thank you. Thank you so much that Solomon. Let me let me ask another question. If I may, which comes from one of our attendees, Alexander Gomez, who is rightly asking because you mentioned customary. There's a lot of customary and a lot of land in Liberia still and the customer regulations and how do you manage your relationship of not formalizing customary rights and also providing indigenous groups access to their data and their information. The relationship between opening improving access to information to people in a context where a lot of land is not really formalized. Is this a threat for these communities? How do you defend and protect their rights to access information? Thank you. So the first thing is we have the land rights that was passed into law in 2018 and that provides that each individual in the law librarians have ownership to land. So given the fact that it's a customary, we have an obligation as an authority to be able to formalize the land across in most of our rural parts. But the sad thing is resources are limited as scarce. So we rely heavily on partners working in the land space to be able to formalize. And then we as a government institution, we have been able to come up with set procedures on how we can formalize this land. I mean, take them from the customary study to deeding, giving them the statutory deed for this land. The process involves steps that start with community self identification and when identified the land, we come to buy laws, we do boundary work, we do confirmatory survey, we do land use planning, we develop participatory land use planning and then subsequently issue the deed to this community. And once they have the deed, then we show that they have some their right to the land is protected in that link and that be so until after 50 years, because of all the issue of land grabbing. And then now for the issue of managing this data, we have developed a portal, as I said, that is currently running, all our CSO that are working in the community, upload that data to our platform. And it's publicly available free. But for the CSO that entering the data they have some restriction you don't just enter the data is available. We carry on the data is subjected to data review process which is done at the land authority. And in the process of formalization, what we do is that we have a stage where we do the awareness again we tell them what this process all about, why you stand to benefit in your commitment what we expect of you in this process as a customary community. So that's it. Thank you. Thank you Dr Solomon. Say Dima let me come back to you you're just, you already mentioned how Senegal has signed up to the open government partnership and could you perhaps elaborate a little bit more on, or maybe provide some concrete examples on specific commitments that has been followed on and and the benefits of engaging with such a platform. Yeah, thank you so much Laura. I think that there are a lot of benefits of joining such a platform. For example, for a country to join the open government partnership, the collaboration between the government and civil society organizations is non negotiable. So since 2018, the government, the Senegalese government and some civil society organizations have developed a national action plan. And one of the priorities was to adopt an access to information law. So this gave an example of collaboration or an opportunity of collaboration between the stakeholders. And I personally had the opportunity to participate in several P2P learning events, mainly in Cote d'Ivoire and in Kenya. And this was an opportunity to share and to learn from each others within the continent. So I do think that this is a good platform that can be used to improve access to information. As well as citizens participation in the budgetary process and also accountability. But the thing is, when we are developing such such an initiative, generally we don't take into account the political context. And for example, in Senegal, we will organize a presidential election next year. And regarding the person who will be in charge of the country the next five years, we are not sure if whether or not this law will be adopted. And this is why, while developing such an initiative, it is important to take into account the political context. Because this can be a difficulty that we want to address. But to my opinion, it is really a good initiative, but let's just take more into account the political context and to involve other stakeholders like the Balear Monterey and local governments. Yeah, thanks so much. Thank you very much. Yes, indeed, it requires a widespread commitment and engaging in engagement to really at all level of the government to really as the major custodian of land that really improve access to information and make any important change. Let me go back to Ken, and talking about challenges and lessons learned from the past years. In your major lessons learned from the initiatives that are CRMD have implemented over the last 10 years in relation to adoption readiness or deployment of the technology. For instance, in the chat, there are an attendee that is asking why, whether you are working in Mozambique or in Kenya, or whether you provide land youth data etc. So there are still many requests for CRMD to engage, but still I imagine that you have already a good understanding of what you've been able to achieve and what are the major challenges still ahead and your main lessons learned. Thank you Laura and thanks for the question as well. So for the center before I come to the challenges, let me mention that we work in Eastern and Southern Africa and Mozambique is part and parcel of that scope. Not only in Eastern Africa, but we work in entire Africa. So we have the mandate to be able to support each and every institution in Africa about private and public individuals as well to be able to gain access to information information. So we are not only in Kenya, but various members as well and beyond the members. So we are willing to always step in to support in various ways that are deemed necessary for us. So let me now handle the aspect of the challenges and allow me to categorize them into four, the challenges in technology, the challenges in the usability of the information that are in the challenges, aggression and also challenges in the framework, the policies as well. So we've learned in the last 10 years that data is a critical component of any information system. And since we're dealing with information access, we want to be able to do away with the systems. So later and the data itself has to be somewhere. And most of the time, we find those data in hard copies. That's why it's easy to get them on the map. And there is some problems with your audio. Maybe you should turn out the video and maybe the audio will improve. Go ahead, please. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that. Apologies. So that data exists in Africa is in hard way and there is to have them in software. And most data in Africa is categorized as sensitive or public consumption or private. We assist in granting access to this data because we get level where we define data sensitive, then already we have a barrier to sharing that data. So we need a course of classification and categorization of this public and what is private and how we make the sensitive data still accessible, but in a way that can protect the owner of the data as well. So one of the things that we've learned as well is the automation of the processes. So in terms of processing data, how do we make these processes from the data processing to the data access and the data is not dynamic, it changes. So how do we put in these systems that can automate this so that we are able to each and every time there's a thing it easily feeds existing data that we had already. So to mention is critical and we are in the forefront of assisting countries through automation. And lastly on data standards, and I think they opened your special concern supporting place various data standards to supporting the special data, but rarely defined standards standards that support the non spatial data. So what criteria do we use to make sure that a document and article publication is something that that that possibly can speak with authority over. And so we lack the authenticating the special data that exists in the countries. So for the national data we make for this because they put in place the data and the quality assurance that come on with that. But what do we say about the special data, we have data on documents we have data on articles, we have data published and public from various institutions as well as private and public government institutions. But how do we, how do we categorize this, we have a criteria that looks at the credibility of this data as much as we have the criteria on the on the special side of. Over to you Laura. Thank you can thank you for mentioning these four important challenges, which we really really share with you as a data organization so the importance of standards and the important of automation the important of navigation and. And also yes privacy, no privacy and and and and data equity and data justice now because they're opening up data cannot come without the recognition that privacy is also value and and there is some vulnerability attached to data so it must be very, it must be taken into account very carefully. Nanny, I wanted to also give you the floor now and ask what have been the challenges and lessons learned for the network in advancing this agenda on access to information in Africa. Yeah, thank you very much Laura and I think I sort of have to jump on of one of those previous speakers have already mentioned right with the challenges that we have also been facing. Of course we're looking at it from an academic point of view and also from our partner institutions academic institutions across the continent. And of course we see that there is a great interest in on the one hand having data available, not only for specific research projects, but also then to specifically look at conducting research, be it for example on the accessibility of land data in a given country. We do witness that there are still numerous gaps when it comes to availability of that kind of information. And as Ken was saying, of course, especially if we look at more sensitive data geospatial data that might have certain ramifications when being published. So we try to look at it on the one hand to say, okay, let's look at the principle of subsidiarity. What can we do also on a regional level do, for example, the notes that we work with. These are the regional hubs that we are partnered with. Can they start on a regional level with collecting the necessary data. And here, for example, we have, for example, the host institution of the NERGA North Africa note. The answer to agonomic if it's here in the house and do the EIV in the rock where they say, okay, we put a strong focus on geospatial data and we try to put a regional repository to avail that data but here of course on the regional level. And our project of course working with African Union that idea is to also have all of that available on the continental level. And we've talked about the guidelines that already exist from the African Union Commission. And seeing that Ken is here, he knows about it. We have embarked on a partnership already with RCMRD to say, okay, how can we support in this case together also without our NEPAT. See how can we support member states create so-called land data help desks in selected countries. And I mean what we did witness there as well of course we there's a possibility to provide necessary training on software hardware and so forth to then also make the necessary information available. We do see that there needs to be a very strong commitment when it comes to mandate and resources provided to the institutions that are responsible for data and here of course we also have the issue that it's oftentimes not only one institution right there needs to be this whole of government approach to say okay what do we actually provide which kind of information and here I would add to the challenges that were already outlined. I would add this aspect of mandate and resources that we then of course always witness because of course from a from a development point of view we want to make sure that it's sustainable so the mandate has to be there in the national governments and also the resources have to be there to continue the work that we can only kickstart. Thank you you highlighted the very very critical points on the mandate who is who are the custodians of land that was the mandate to really create data available to people and what kind of support can all the sector provide to the custodians. Tommy, we heard about many challenges and and the different initiatives had and efforts being done to provide an enabling environment for opening up land data and improve access to information. Could you briefly share with us whether the picture that can or Nani, Saidina or Dr. Mahoud have picture as is coming is coming up no and then the state of land information research. Do you recognize some of these challenges in your research. Thank you Laura. I definitely think that there's a lot of resonance with what some of the previous speakers have said, in terms of what we have found so far. I just want one of the questions I think it was a question that you asked to Ken that came from one of the participants that said, you know, what do we do with data that we want government to adopt in decision making. I want to just stress here that from the land portal's perspective, we have taken that approach that data and in our work we look at data that is produced by government for its use and how effective government is in that regard, because there are lots of data that are produced by the World Bank and other international organizations that have data on land, but our assessment focuses really more on the role of government as one of the primary custodians. So when we start looking at data at a national level, and I'm going to group this into three key takeaways. The first one and can also be alluded to some of that. The first one is that typically, we find that more data exists at the national level, then is initially anticipated. So often we hear that people and countries will say, there is no land data in country X. When we do that, we find that it's not completely true. But often it is not accessible or very accessible. It is not so available. Sometimes it's not digital. Sometimes it's enclosed systems, but there is already a strong foundation or opportunity in that challenge as well. I think the second key point that we've come across is that having said that there's data available, the data sources are fragmented. They are unstructured. They are not interoperable. They are poorly documented and thus not open, even if they are often considered public data. So we will often hear the comment that, but we make our data available. We uploaded it on the website. But when you look at the data, it is difficult to discover. It cannot be found. And it doesn't use common standards. It doesn't use interoperable standards, which I think is critical for making the data discoverable and for making the data interoperable. And I think this is a key area of work that needs to be done. I think the third key area that we've identified is that there is a significant data community and data capacity in many of the countries that we have looked at. That data capacity might not always be in the land sector. I think our speaker from Senegal mentioned the importance of the open budget and a lot of that data has been published in open formats, but less of it is finding its way to the land sector. So it's about identifying that capacity and marrying it with the land sector. In terms of the specific findings for land data, and here I'm talking about data on the tenure use development and value of land. We found that legal and policy data, so your acts your statutory documents are often quite open and available, as well as what we call other land data. This may include data on agricultural or national census data, even things such as public procurement or beneficial land ownership, and sometimes on on land reforms. Here the most open data in the land sector resides on the core functions of tenure and value, we find almost zero open data available. There's a little bit more land use data available, but also not very much land development data this is data on development applications development licenses where it's urban and rural, and how those processes are tracked and enforced. So we find that data on the core functions of land administration is actually quite scarce. And then the last point I want to make is that of the 11 countries where we've now done research. We find that South Africa, which was the first country to implement an open API law has the most open data ecosystem, but surprisingly Namibia and Zambia come in next. And Namibia only passed an API law at the end of last year, and Zambia does not have an API law yet. But what they have managed to do was actually to create open data portals to start having a conversation about spatial data infrastructures about spatial data infrastructures, even in the absence of a law. And I think this area of standards of interoperability, and providing some technical proficiency with the data and I think can also mention that is really the key areas of improvement and the importance that are available. But I think this demonstrates the importance also of developing a benchmark, a global benchmark that we can measure and map these results, and really have a mechanism to understand how countries are performing with regards to opening up and making data available. Yes, indeed. And this, this, let us move to the, to the following session of this webinar, which is exactly about benchmarking access to land information and you can see the work done by the land portal rate highlights how important it is to document the state. Also, can mention the importance of having the data repositories, catalogs that describe who has, who holds what information, what is the state of this information. But then it's also important to have a global overview, a rating on how this information performs vis-a-vis international recognized open data standards and that's the the old vision of having such a benchmarking tool. So Tommy, can you explain what you are proposing as a benchmarking for open land data? Thank you. I think what we are proposing and I want to touch on the first two points is that we need a benchmark on land information and I think one of the participants also asked that question, what is land information? So we need a benchmark that defines land information and that defines openness or access to data. And so what we are proposing really is to refine the work that we've already done in the solar methodology and on the land module with a global data parameter in order to develop a globally comparable index for the state of land information across the world. And such a new indicator from the land portal aims to make land related findings more actionable and to complement existing land governance monitoring initiatives. It assesses the openness of land data at the country level and at the global level. Why do we think this is needed? We think that land data in the public domain enables the efficient use of land. It also assists with ensuring transparency and improves decision making and service provision that the data is not the goal in and of itself. It is really what governments can improve with regard to delivery of services. We think it can be used by data custodians, by policy makers, very important and also by researchers, land development practitioners and other open data and data advocates. We think it is based on our existing methodology and what it does is to take the modern theory of land administration and use that as a basis for defining what land data is and also to use that land administration as a means of sustainable development to identify the core land data categories so that the data can actually support land governance. And then it also ensures that the indicator is aligned with Fela, the framework for effective land administration, and the integrated geospatial information framework. We can also understand it's an interoperable so I think it is important that an index is aligned with these continental and global instruments to ensure interoperability, and we can then assess the openness across these categories and have various ways that organizations can investigate the data so that the findings can be used not only to describe the degree of openness or to describe an organization's capabilities with regards to opening data but can be used as a diagnostic to identify obstacles for opening up land data and making it more accessible so that the findings can be implemented to improve the situation we find ourselves in. Thank you Tommy. Thank you. Thank you so much for presenting all this important work and there are many questions. I'm also trying to respond and address these questions on between your interventions but there are many many coming which is great. Thank you for posing all these questions. I want to come back to say Dina now and while I ask you what you think about, you know the importance of this assessment. I also want to take advantage of this question to address the question from Mamadou, who specifically for Senegal who says, one thing is access to information and measuring assessing access to information and data but another thing is verifying the authenticity of this information, the compliance with certain standards. So he says the main problem in Africa might be that in Senegal in particular that is there is a lot of information available does not reflect the reality on the grounds. And this might have, of course, my influence know how policies are then formulated. So what do you think about this exercise of documenting and assessing information and how do you think we should address this. The risk of the available publicly available information not reflecting the reality of the ground. Yes, thank you so much Laura and thank you to Mamadou for this important question. I think that he's right. One of the big challenges that we are facing is the quality of the data that we can find, mainly at the local level. And that's why I think that the solely report can be used as an opportunity to run a data quality assessment, especially on the local level to see what are the kind of data that are available. And if these data have a good quality and can be used, especially for advocacy purposes. And I think that one of the one of the opportunity that we have now in Senegal is there is recently a reform that allow communities to have what we call collective rights. So for example, if there is a community or community somewhere who is living in this area for many years or for decades, they can now have a collective right, not an individual right but a collective right in this in this land and this is an opportunity that can be used to target the users of the land in Senegal, what are their identity, is it a community or is just one person, etc. So I think that this is an important question. And it is the reality is that there are a lot of data that can be found, especially in Senegal at different level. And this data can be different from one person to another or from one institution to another and running a data quality assessment can be to my opinion, a good solution so that we can, we can develop a strong data land data in Senegal and what we are now trying to develop with land portal is to use the solar report in order to run a survey in Senegal, especially in some region in order to develop this solution. Thank you so much for this question. Thank you for your question. I wanted to now ask the same question to Dr. Mahoum Solomon. How important is to have such a measurement such a documentation to get a proper understanding of the state land data be able to respond to the challenges around land information. Thank you for that question. It's very much important to be able to showcase data but at the same time, be able to measure to be able to tell what are people, what are the people from the local environment, the local setting have the right information at the right time. So, with that being said, so there are a lot of ways people we from our country carry on that like I stated earlier, we have a very high electricity rates. So, we tend to use local engagement that is people even use town cry out when you phone people about information, but there are some downsides to that. You see that will not be able to get to every part of the country one because of in the inaccessibility in some locations, you cannot reach there and another issue is the lack of reliable data. You see that sometimes the data is not all that good. So you have to have extra layer of review. Then again we'll come back to capacity building capacity building the sense of the CSOs, our land actors are involved in land activities be able to come up to speed to be able to handle the technology. So we talk about having periodic or continuous capacity building for them. Then one thing I would like to stress on here is that in my country, we have Muslim institution working in silos. We have the forestry, we have the EPA, we have the statistical house, they all deal with information, geospatial information so to speak, but they are working in silos. We don't have a common platform, you know, going to the fact of the national spatial data infrastructure, we don't have a common repository where we have this thematic version of data. So, for example, EPA you need information on mangrove where you can get it from there, we got a statistical population, you can get information on population, we got the forestry we don't have that all the institutions are working in silos. And then another thing, to be able to monitor the knowledge, people's perception of the data or land information that is very limited. Most of our activity are donor-driven and as you may be aware, donors have their priority and they have time balance, so after that time they leave, then the issue of sustainability becomes a problem. So you cannot go, we don't have the capacity, we don't have the resources to always go back to check, you know, as to how people are handling information, how people are managing that information. So, another thing is, apart from the FOR that I mentioned earlier, we don't have any law on data on standard and to be able to articulate our geospatial needs. So, I think it's something we've been talking, it's a good thing to have national legislation involved to be able to come up with data, maybe even passing a law on data quality standards and all that. So far that's all I have for now. And this very great contribution to the debates. So, Nanny, you want to share your opinion also on how important is it to document and measure and have a proper understanding of the state of land information. Thank you very much, Laura, and let me also congratulate you and your team, of course, for having already embarked on the Soli reports, which provide a very good benchmarking, so to speak, of course, for in order to compare different countries. So thank you for that. I think, I mean, hearing the discussion, there are a few thoughts that came to my mind is of course, as Tommy had mentioned the question of the standards that are necessary for indexes, right. So which ones do you use? I know the African Union also has their own sort of Mela indicators for monitoring the evaluation of land and Africa. So this would be something to consider, of course, for the African continent. And then, of course, one thing that came to mind also is which type of information do we actually consider. I mean, we talked a lot about customary land rights and so forth. And then the question that actually popped to my mind was how do we actually ensure that also already transmitted information is being considered. Because, of course, we have a very, I would almost say Western understanding in the sense that information has to be written down, data has to be made available. But I'm now looking at how do we ensure that also non-written information can sort of be captured in the assessment that we're doing that is one thought. And then, of course, the second thought that I had was, I mean, we know that the benchmarking is not a one-off activity, right. So it has to be updated regularly. And I think this is something that needs to be considered, of course, already when initiating such a process. But in general, I mean, for our work, it's very much welcomed. Of course, we hope that also the benchmarking helps also then from a decision-maker point of view motivate the decision-makers to keep up with the so-called standards to make sure that, of course, their level of benchmarking is being increased over time. So that would be my thoughts also with regards to that. Thank you. Thank you so much. Very, very interesting. And Ken, would you also like to share your point of view? You mentioned data catalogs and the work done on data catalogs. So you recognize the importance of documenting and assessing land data. Please share your view. Thank you, Lara. And let me also echo Nani's congratulations on the report. It's much welcome and we are hoping to see much of it as well. Just to pick from possibly what Tommy was saying, and I think I'm able to see the five points of entry for various users. And that's from the big picture all the way to the downloads. I think this will be a critical addition to the already existing indicators. I think Nani has mentioned mail already. And so we welcome this much because many times we don't even agree about the definition of some critical words in workshops. And if we are able to agree about them at the global level, then it's easier for us to put it down even to the country levels. So allow me to say that this is much welcome and that it will go a long way in supporting our endeavor in making land data accessible and available to the public. Thank you and over to you, Lara. Thank you. And Tommy, do you see any difference between ranking and rating? Now we are not, of course, looking at comparing, measuring governments or state performance here, but we need to have a better understanding not to have an entry point for discussion and improvement. Now, absolutely, Laura, and I think it's fundamentally important while I recognize that, you know, an element of competition cannot be eliminated. But the goal is not to compare countries with one another for the sake of bragging rights, but rather to compare each country with the benchmark that they set for themselves. In other words, there's a benchmark for opening up data and there's criteria or categories of land data and countries can use the index to benchmark themselves in terms of their achievements and set goals for themselves. I think rather than looking at what is country X, Y or Z doing. So I think that's the value of an index like this that is based on these kind of benchmarking that allows countries to use it as a diagnostic for improvement and not only as a sort of competitive tool to see who is better than who. I think you on mute, Laura. I mean, thank you. Just on the issue of documentation, there is an interesting comment by Cholugo Salimata, perhaps for the land port, about those four, for Ken, he says that if any project exists at the conservation, the documentation of the archival documents, those that dates back from the colonial period because these are major source of knowledge of Africa land, and that generally in a very poor condition, and of course not digitized. I don't know if RC or MD is doing anything about this legacy, historical data and information can. But of course, this will be very ambitious to have such document digitized and available online I guess. Maybe just very quickly add Laura Senegal is the only country that I'm not the only country but is one of the countries that we worked off that has an archival law that specifies that the archives must be open access. So I thought that's just an interesting point on that question because it's a very good point. Thank you for reminding us that Tommy. Ken, do you want to add anything or respond to? Sure, Laura, and I think that's a good question. And if you walk to many of the institutions in Africa that has data that relates to land or land data. I'm not in the hard to copy because they are done long, long time ago, and so they're not willing to be able to do that. But I can also clearly mention that it's within the mandate of the service for the case of Kenya. It's a way of Kenya money to be able to look at some of these things without the means of months. And we are happy to mention that we supported the survey of Kenya digitize all the beginning with the topographical maps that they had in 1972 to date. They were digitized just a normal scanning from hard to copy to soft copy. And that's make it easier for us to be able to even do the updating. It's easier to update a soft copy than a hard copy. So that is a critical bit of things. And we've supported Ghana as well in that as well as Kenya. And we are looking forward to doing so much more in that regard. Thank you and over to you. Thank you. And we got to an end of our webinar is already 3030 so we need to close. But let me wrap up by asking each of you to share what is the one key land data challenge or wish that Africa must consider not to really become the powerhouse of the future. Let me start by Tommy first and then each of you before we close. Hi, thank you, Laura. This is going a little bit obvious but I think the way forward for us really is to establish this need to measure and benchmark access to land data in order that we can understand how to improve the land data ecosystem. Thank you. Thank you. And Nanny, what is your your message? Yeah, my message my wish would be to look at the mandates and then bring together the relevant institutions and make sure that each institution knows its mandate and making sure that the data can be provided because land is such a cross cutting topic. Thank you so much, Nanny. Thank you. And Dr. Mahoud, what is the one challenge that you would like to be addressed or your wish for the future for the way forward? Thank you for that question. I will use one wall collaboration. I want an African country to be able to collaborate. It could be true knowledge sharing whatever so that we can see what this other country is doing, what I'm not doing, what I'm falling short of some things and then I can tap into the knowledge from another country and tap that and move forward. So the key warrior is collaboration to take our land information forward. Thank you so much, Dr. Mahoud. Let's break silence and collaborate and say, Dina, what is your takeaway, the key challenge or your wish for the future? Yeah, thank you so much. My wish is open data for better service delivery. In Senegal, we have a particularity. 90% of all the claims in our courts are related to land. So I wish that one day we will address this problem and we can use open data to improve citizens' access to public services. Thank you. Good wish. Ken? Thank you, Lara. I have two. I hope it's okay. Fair enough. We should digitize the data. As people are mentioning here, colleagues as well. We have the data already, but we need to digitize the data that will be accessible. Then the second bit is that the mentality and the perception of keeping data. I want to inform our colleagues here today that when you open data, people will enrich that data. They will not misuse it, but they'll make it better. So if we want data to be made better and the quality even in terms of the attribute that comes with it, then let's open the data and we'll enrich it far, far than is using it. Thank you. Thank you. This is a great statement to close this webinar. So big, big thank you to our great panelists. Thank you for your time and your engagement. It was really a rich conversation. We learned so much. Thank you for joining. Thank you for all the participants, very big group of participants. We appreciate your participation until the very end. Please take the survey and and please share your provide your feedback on how we could improve it do better. Thank you everyone and let's close the webinar a big club to all of you, and we wish to see you next time. Thank you. Have a good day. Thank you. Bye bye. Thank you. Bye bye.