 we welcome you from wherever it is that you are joining us from and we're delighted to have you be part of today's conversation. Before I introduce myself I would like to begin with some general housekeeping and some logistics. The first is to bring to your attention that we have interpretation services for this webinar being offered in French Portuguese and in Spanish in order to access these interpretation services please click on the globe icon that you'll find in the lower part of the window in the Zoom program and select the language that you would prefer. Additional logistic notes to please be aware of is that this webinar is being live-streamed on multiple platforms. Please also note that there is social media engagement related to the webinar and this is happening on the land portal Twitter account and the hashtag that's being used is hashtag align that's hashtag align that's align a l i g n. We have also created a social media kit for this event and you can access that in the chat and lastly please note that if you do have questions that you would like to ask the panelists you can ask those questions using the Q&A button which you will see at the bottom of your screen and those questions will be answered later in the webinar. So just to repeat for those who are joining the webinar is being live-streamed there's a Twitter handle that's being used the hashtag is at hashtag at I'm sorry hashtag align and the Twitter account is that of the land portal and lastly for questions please use the Q&A button that's at the bottom of your Zoom screen and then additionally the session today is being recorded as I said and you will receive a link to the video that you can watch afterwards there will also be an article that's being published with key messages from today's discussion and that will also be available in the land portal website. So with all of those housekeeping matters taken care of I'm going to introduce myself before I move into describing briefly our conversation today and also then move to introduce our speakers. I would ask that guests who are joining the webinar please mute themselves just to avoid disruption. My name is Nolundi Luwaya I'm the director of the Land and Accountability Research Center which is based at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and as I said I have the pleasure of being the moderator today and I welcome you all very warmly to this webinar on the role of African traditional authorities in land-based investment governance. This webinar is the third in the series that is hosted by the advancing land-based investment governance organization and it focuses on the governance of land-based investments within the global south. The series explores practical strategies and approaches that are adopted by rights defenders and practitioners to address common challenges surrounding these investments and so we extend our thanks to a line for hosting us. Today's webinar will tackle a particularly complex conversation which is looking at the range of roles and responsibilities that exist at the intersection of land-based investment, tradition and governance in a variety of contexts within Africa. We will unpack the complicated picture that emerges when trying to establish responsible processes around investment and responsible processes around who it is who gets to make decisions on behalf of communities. This of course is all happening in the context of trying to navigate the evolving frameworks for managing plural systems within different contexts. Our discussion today seeks to delve into the power dynamics and the perceptions at play and how if at all the development of nuanced legal frameworks can ensure accountability and responsible decision-making to the benefit of both communities and their leaders. Our conversation brings together a variety of actors working at this intersection to give us a holistic perspective of how the governance of land information together with thoughtfully developed laws and bottom up practices can assist in bringing transparency and protecting the rights of communities. So please get ready for an insightful discussion into Africa's land governance challenges and solutions. Allow me now to introduce our speakers today. I'm joined this afternoon by a very knowledgeable panel to discuss the matters of interest in today's webinar. We're joined by Dr. Mahamud Solomon who is the Assistant Director of Survey and Mapping from the Liberia Land Authority. He also serves as an Assistant Professor at the University of Liberia. We're joined by his Royal Highness, Dr. Chief Mumena of the Kaurande speaking people in the Kalumbila district of northwestern province in Zambia. Chief Mumena is one of his country's most respected traditional leaders and we're very pleased to have him join us today. We're joined by Mr. Milton Kamara who is the Chairperson of the Land Owners Committee in Kaseh Chiftem in Sierra Leone. Milton was involved in a historic decision in which the community was actually able to win back land that had been leased to a foreign company and we're very pleased to have him with us. We're also joined by Nana Amayira who is the Founder and Executive Director of Kalandef which is an NGO based in Ghana. They work on achieving land tenure security and as a land economist herself as well as a Development Policy Analyst and a Gender Specialist. Nana has spent over 24 years delivering interventions to support land and natural resource governance and securing women's land rights. She has been a consistent advocate for a gender sensitive land governance system in Ghana and we are very pleased to have her with us today. Finally we're also joined by Mr. Bernard Oppa who is the Deputy Director of Natural Resources and Environment at the National Land Commission in Kenya. Currently he's also focusing on natural resource dispute resolution and conflict transformation and we look forward to his input this afternoon. So allow me then to begin this discussion by giving the floor to his Majesty Chief Momenna. Your Majesty it would be interesting to hear from you how the context in Zambia specifically the position and the role of traditional authorities in land-based investments as well as their control of land and the interactions with state authorities how these things influence the challenges that are faced by yourself as a chief and how do these experiences align with the existing policies and protocols that govern the engagement of investors and what are the factors that impact your ability to fulfill the role ascribed to you. So your Majesty over to you. Chief Momenna please go ahead and unmute. Maybe what I'll do is move to the next speaker and come back to his Majesty. I'm gonna come to you then Nana. It would be wonderful to hear the perspective from Ghana and perhaps to hear from you about what the primary contentions are that are emerging from agricultural mining and other land-based investments and how that reflects the roles and the positions of traditional authorities within your context and particularly perhaps you could speak to whether there are discrepancies between law and practice and how these contestations manifest particularly from a gender equality perspective. Thank you very much and hello to everybody. I'm happy to be here. So for me personally and for my organization this conversation is such an important one because the context in which we operate in Ghana is such that traditional authorities play a significant role in Ghana's land governors. For many of you you know that Ghana has a dual system so we have the customary land tenure system and we have the state's land tenure system and what this means is that a large part of the land 80% is managed by the customary land tenure system which is administered by various customary land authorities in different capacities across the country and this is significant because what it means is that they are not just occupying their land and working as sewers the states to administer no they are actually in control of the territory that they govern and this is handed over to them under the customary system but the constitution guarantees this mandate as managers of customary lands so what that means is that when you come to Ghana and you are looking for land to acquire for any kind of activity you are almost 100% certain that the acquisition will be granted by a traditional leader and that is significant because the state has nothing to do with that and yet when you look at the way the customary land authorities manage these grants then you would see that there are several issues that along the chain affects all the people on the land, affects the businesses and even affects the entire system, state system for administering land based investment why do I say that because historically in Ghana the scope and scale of land acquisition was that various ethnic groups existed around the land and they were parceled out to farmers members of the communal you know group in different forms just a piece of land performing for subsistence and so on but currently the scale and scope of acquisition on commercial basis is far beyond what the capacity of our current traditional leaders can take and yet they are the ones mandated to manage they are the ones mandated to make the decision on whom to grant to how much to grant in the terms under which the grant is made the state comes in only at the point when the grant has been made and there is supposed to be a registration of the grants that is where the state comes in of course there are state rules about the uses so that if a grant is made it has to be in I mean in line with the state zoning regulations and so on but in many cases the enforcement of those regulations are limited and also because the acquisition in many cases is done in areas that are quite or not so developed we don't have too much strict rules on zoning and so basically it's in the hands of our traditional leaders who are managers of the customary lands and as I have mentioned because they handle this based on the customs the traditions with very limited technical capacity to analyze the land deal it creates a lot of challenges along the way challenges not only for themselves as traditional leaders but challenges for the members of the land owning group and members of the investment community as well because in some cases the law actually gives the type of rights that can be granted but many a time they may not even have too much awareness of it the six types of rights that can be granted in many cases you see some of the grants that they have made and it is not in line with that and yet investors have made investments in it and it is creating a lot of problems so that is a huge one for us in Ghana acquisition is just in the hands of the traditional authorities registration documentation land use planning is in the hands of the state and by the time investors go to the point of registration the acquisition has already been sealed and it creates that challenges the other thing for the customary land system is that the traditional leader is only a custodian of the land they don't have absolute rights over the land so the allodial ownership is held collectively by the members of the land owning group the ethnic group so if a traditional leader is holding custody of these allodial lands on behalf of themselves and the members of the group then it is suspected and actually the law requires them to be accountable to members of the land owning group but again that accountability doesn't happen because the mandates they have and the customary beliefs around it makes them look very revered by members of the group that you dare not even ask for accountability the other thing is that the benefit sharing from whatever transactions is also boxed up in the level at the level of the traditional leader it doesn't go down to all members of the group and therefore before any investor knows it they have made a lot of investments at the point of entry which is a traditional authority and all the other things that need to be managed downstream will have to be managed again by the investment and finally I would want to also put across the fact that in Ghana the traditional leadership is such that we have the male members and we have the female members so and in the hierarchy the paramount chief the divisional chief the sub chiefs and so on they all have their female counterparts and they are supposed to be working together in a collaborative manner in dealing with all the mandates that they have both under custom and under the state system but because of the gender dynamics the relations in terms of how the traditions expect women to behave it also affects the exercise of leadership by the female members of the traditional authority so you would have queen mothers who are female members of the traditional authority being part of everything happening in the traditional area except when it comes to decision making on customary lands benefit sharing and dispute resolution and that excludes them from all of that and so it ends up being in the hands of the custodians the male chiefs to the exclusion of everyone else including even the queen mothers in a few cases some have tried to involve other members of the traditional leadership but again that also creates some difficulties because those are the community level who are actually the ones going to handle the impacts of any such investment hardly gets involved hardly gets any benefit hardly are part of the decision making and yet they are the ones to handle the issues that come so that is just picture of what the situation is in Ghana thank you thank you so much Nana I'm wondering if I could come back to chief mumena and if he is able to unmute and to speak to us about the context in in Zambia particularly around the position and role of traditional leaders and authorities when it comes to land based investments chief mumena are you able to speak to us I'm going to move then to Milton Milton I'm wondering if we could hear from you about the situation in Sierra Leone in particular it would be interesting to hear about what the perception is of the chief's role when it comes to protecting or undermining the community rights to land that is held collectively and also perhaps you could tell us about how communities interact with government actors particularly when it comes to large-scale investment projects like mining and agriculture and again if you could speak to us about whether there are differences between what's written in the law and what actually happens in practice Milton over to you thank you very much thank you for having me hi to everybody once again I am Milton Kamara I am from Cassay but Western Sierra Leone I am head of an organization called Cassay Land Owners Organization our internal objective is to protect defend and uphold the rights of land-owned families and we do this in consultation and partnership with Namati well as a previous speaker was talking from Ghana there are a lot of similarities and some differences in our own part of this country for Sierra Leone the new land law was passed last year but before then we had difficulties in dealing with the chief's role the government and the investors as opposed to managing the rights of the land owners we had a lot of difficulties the chiefs then seemed to be siding on the side of the investors instead of the land-owned families and this was because government invested the land the rights of this land in the hands of the chiefs and the chiefs on council chiefs were then described as the custodians of this land when because of time these chiefs decided to change the word custodian to ownership instead of the land-owned families in the owners of this land the chiefs tend to become owners well in the communities there are some level-headed people who sat down and just think things should not go that way we decided to mount up the challenge we did this in consultation with Namati who were able to equip us with the knowledge that is necessary for this noble cause we set up communities cut across the country we wrote letter to the president we didn't stop there we marched to parliament and employed our members of parliament to have this law passed so rights of the land-owned families can be preserved so for now there is a little bit of improvement speaking on old land laws there are a lot of difficulties we are encountering when investors come they just negotiate with the chiefs we had very bad laws in the agreement this became apparent when the got hold of the disagreement the lease rent was amiga two dollar fifty cent per hectare and the duration for the lease was seven years that was very bad for us and there are no benefits in this agreement for the land owners like corporate social responsibilities profit sharing etc etc all those who are absent thank you Milton thank you I will come back and ask some follow-up questions I would like to now move us to speak or to hear from Mahmood you are working in Liberia and in the Liberian context and I'm wondering if you could speak to us about the principles of dispute resolution as they relate to investments in agriculture and mining and in other sectors and I'm wondering if you could also speak to us about how these principles for dispute resolution actually underscore the role and the significance of traditional authorities and how the Liberia land authority addresses particular conflicts between law and practice okay thank you Milton greeting to everyone on this webinar begin I'm Dr. Mahmood Solomon I'm the assistant director for software mapping at the Liberia land authority okay thank you very much for your question to put that in context let me just give you a background of the land authority relative to traditional land or what we call customary land we have 70 percent of the land in Liberia being customary land which means they are undeaded so they cannot be used for trans trans action unless the land right provides that the owner goal of formalization process where in a statutory DOP submitted at the end of the day which can be used for follows transaction so that the land right has identified the needs for our traditional people to have ownership to their land but before the passage of the land right we have all our existing laws we have the forestry development authority we have the environmental protection agency and we have the ministry of mines and energy we're competing interests in land issues and they also have the right to give either the concessions and other arrangement but then now the land rest has come up and identified the local communities the traditional people as the owner of the land so that means that it's supposed to be able to enter into the arrangement once the land has been formalized so over the time we have noticed that this has led to clashes between some of these stakeholders and our traditional people so when this happens particularly in the event of investment what we do at the level of the Liberia land authority we invite all parties and then we bring all spatial information you have we do some technical analysis and then we see whether it's possible that any arrangement can move forward if possible we pay keen attention to article for the 8.3 of the land rest as that that reserve five percent on diluted free um affairs to be retained by the community any follow concessions so that is our trump card for which we use and going to that fact we realize that um in most of the cases sometimes it leads to some success sometimes there have been some issue but um the land at the level of the land authority we are keep pushing for amendment or ratification on some of these laws so that the issue can be totally eradicated so that our people can have complete ownership to that land because once they have complete ownership to that land they will be able to enter into investment and that that will bring economic social empowerment to our people in these local communities thank you thank you so much Mahmud we move now to the Kenyan context and I'd like to ask Bernard uh to speak to us about what the primary issues are that are surfacing in Kenya in relation to land investments for agriculture and mining um but also if you could speak to us about how these developments uh pertain to the roles and the positions of traditional authorities and how that relates to the functions of the national land commission that would be very helpful Bernard over to you yeah thank you very much and um allow me to say that land in Kenya is very central and so dear to the hearts of many Kenyans uh land is actually the main factor of production and everything in Kenya resonates around land now the current constitution of dispensation in Kenya categorizes land generally into three main categories so in Kenya we have public land and then we have community land and then we have private land so those are the three main categories of land in the republic of Kenya public land is what we manage this national land commission directly on behalf of both national and county governments it is important to state that Kenya has a devolved governance system where we have uh the national government central government but we also have devolved units and so public land is clearly under the trusteeship of both national and county governments however there is an apex body the national land commission that comes to administer all that public land on behalf of both national and county government and so that is our space as national land commission apart from that we also have jurisdiction on community land particularly oversight and monitoring of rights and interests in community land now community land in Kenya is a very interesting paradigm that has been brought by the constitution and essentially what it means is that we have two sub-categories of community land currently the country is undergoing registration of community lands in many many parts of the country largely the pastoral areas and of course when I talk about pastoral areas in Kenya that is close to 82 percent of the entire land of us in the republic of Kenya and so when we talk about community land we are talking about close to 82 percent of the land of us in the republic now what is interesting with community land is that there is a part that has already uh gone through registration or transition largely these were former group branches that have translated however the biggest chunk has not completely translated neither have they been registered so we are currently under a very interesting but delicate situation of registering unregistered community lands the constitution bestows the trusteeship of unregistered community land on the respective county governments but the commission has jurisdiction in terms of uh in terms of how uh those rights and interests are being documented and are being adjudicated so we have that jurisdiction when we talk about investments and large-scale investments in that regard mining agriculture there are a lot of intricacies in terms of demand for for land for both agriculture mining and all these are the important usage and currently we know a lot of mining is actually happening in areas that have not been registered or community land that have not gone through registration and so we have issues of uh compulsory acquisition of unregistered community land is a major issue or at least a challenge for the republic of kenya so there are a number of issues but largely governance governance issues that we are grappling with in terms of land governance but we will be have a constitution we have very important land laws that are now steering all that land management and administration processes in the republic thank you thank you so much benad um i would like to ask the panelists a few more questions and i would ask them to keep their responses short just so that there is sufficient time to deal with questions from uh the participants in the webinar um i'm going to just check whether chief mumena has joined us and if he is able uh to speak to our question about uh the context in zambia and in particular his role as a traditional leader uh chief mumena are you there no all right then i'm going to move back uh to nana ama um and i'm going to ask you uh nana ama to speak to the multi stakeholder platforms and how they function in relation to the dynamics that involve traditional authorities and other actors um and to speak a little bit about the role of garner's land act um and how the the garner and land act shapes interactions and also if you could speak to us a little bit about the evolution of collaborations um that could potentially alter the decision-making processes when it comes to land-based investments and how these changes contribute to advancing gender equality thank you very much so um i would like to emphasize that the new land acts did not change anything at all as far as the mandates the authority that the traditional leaders have as far as the land management is concerned the land acts did not change that if anything at all it reinforced that and even went ahead to also make provisions for the setting up of secretaries in each traditional area so that these secretaries would work in documenting and recording land transactions to alleviate a lot of the insecurities that come from the transactions at that level so the land act did not do anything about that mandate so in the new land acts the chiefs the paramount i mean the traditional leaders are still custodians of the land they are still managers of the customary lands and they are the first point of call when you want a grant of any land rights in garner but what the land act did was that it clarified the different types of interests in land and i want to emphasize this because usually when we are doing conversations around land we consider land as i mean like an item that you acquire and you control i mean it's totally given in its entirety to you that's not what land is at least not in the case of garner because in the case of garner land is about a type of interest granted to you in a parcel and the type of rights granted are different so in the law it categorizes six of these types of rights so we have the allodial interests we have the customary freehold interests we have the common law freehold interests we have the isofrugatory interests we have the leasehold interests and we have the customary tenancies each of these six are valuable in the eyes of the law they are legally recognized and that's for us in the land rights work it's beautiful because previously many of them were not recognized under law and so anytime there was any land acquisition on a large scale if i held a certain type of rights and it wasn't given any recognition then i get dispossessed without any opportunity for any mitigation or any compensation or anything i don't even get any attention but now with the clarification given it means that even if i hold a customary tenancy which under the law is the lowest of land rises can be held i still have you know the opportunity for redress and that is significant the other thing that i would also want to mention is that land acts sought to bring or at least mend the disconnects between the state system and the customary system through the secretaries that were to be established and so it's the law provides that the state land agencies are supposed to provide technical oversight on what happens at the customary level it is our hope that if this is operationalized then it gives room for capacity transfer from the state's level to the traditional area level where customary land actors will be able to have the opportunity to interact with those with technical expertise before any transaction is sealed which could have the possibility of addressing some of the challenges we currently have. Thank you so much Nana i'm going to stop you there sorry in the interests of time forgive me. Milton i'm going to come to you and ask if you can speak briefly about the action that yourself and others in your community have taken to influence the new law and how the new law strengthens accountability of traditional authorities and allows for communities to push for more in responsible investments. Thank you once more and what we do was to settle communities of land-owning families caught across the country Sierra Leone. As i said before we wrote a letter to the president urging him to pass the law into parliament that enables the land-owning families to have rights to their land. We did not stop there we went to parliament all your members of parliament to pass this into law and that was what they did for now there's a law in place the rights of the land is now vested in the hands of the communities and the land-owning families the chiefs merely complement our efforts we did not stop there we set up affiliate land committees comprising of the land owners land users women and the chiefs now the decision making is in the hands of this setup everybody is being heard on what contribution they make and the perseverance of land rights that was exactly what we did. Thank you so much Melton. Mahmood i'm coming to you to ask in Liberia's context and with reference to the Liberian Land Authority what actions or legislative reforms or changes to law might be a possible option in order to mitigate the tensions that arise while at the same time balancing the different types of rights that communities hold when it comes to land and how has the authority engaged in order to enhance our understanding and definition of roles and responsibilities sorry colleagues if people joining could mute themselves please I'll repeat that last part Mahmood and it was just how has the authority the Liberian Land Authority engaged in order to enhance understandings and the definitions of roles and responsibilities okay thank you again in in Liberia like I've indicated initially 70% of our land's customary and the government has identified a need to ensure that our people have legitimate ownership to their land so we the law provides that each customary community or traditional community go through a process of customary land formalization there are a couple of steps we have in our formalization process and the law provides that the Liberian Land Authority the statutory institution responsible should be able to conduct that process but with resource constraint that process is taken on by donors CSOs working in the land sector and they are complementing the effort of the Liberian Land Authority and the land authority only provides support when it comes to verification and confirmatory survey so as part of the process there is a part of it where the communities themselves form something called CLDMC Community Land Management Development Committee this committee consists of its general sense general balance it has equal representation of different sector of the community and they manage the land the land authority give them the support to be able to manage whatever arrangement they have in their land space so this committee is the one that responsible so from time to time we provide support but the process has been very tedious and and maybe I would say it needs some consideration some reform because the community see the community themselves for which we are to benefit they see the process as giving job to those who are coming to do the work so their collaboration is sometimes minimal so most of the time face issue in that regard they don't really you know take it as their own so maybe the government and the community need to sit together and be able to ensure that the community take ownership of the process wherein they will be able to provide some support towards the formalization process it will not only be left with CSO and donor working in the land space it will be a combination of the government the community and who so ever that is willing to provide support for the formalization of this community thank you thank you thank you so much Mahmud uh Bernard coming back to you I'm wondering if you could speak to us about how the National Land Commission has managed to navigate tensions uh and concerns that arise in a context where you have a plurality of community rights in land and what are the ways uh that the commission has sought to engage stakeholders in order to get a better understanding or to clarify the roles and responsibilities um when uh as they relate to traditional authorities Bernard over to you yeah thank you very much yes the National Land Commission at the heart of our our programs and projects is the whole thing about meaningful stakeholder participation and involvement and so local communities are actually part and parcel of decision making regarding land the commission has a duty to ensure that the interest as an independent constitutional commission we ensure that our communities particularly the minority marginalized together with the vulnerable uh including women their interest in regards to land is protected and safeguarded that is part of our work as an independent constitutional commission when you talk about traditional authorities I mentioned that Henry has a very rich traditional system and land is still uh managed within those traditional systems uh using cultural systems and cultural norms and practices however the legal regime that we have currently uh in terms of the constitution has actually given birth to important institutions that are now currently charged with the management and administration of land but then there is actually the whole spectrum of consultation and even in terms of dispute resolution we have a robust constitution that talks about encouragement of traditional dispute resolution system so when you talk about traditional authorities they have a big space in the Republic of Kenya when you talk about land governance and we still cherish our very own way of managing land through the traditional forms which of course involves the Council of Elders and even our diverse and rich ethnic groups around the entire country and someone was actually asking a question on whether it is important for uh the Commission to guarantee uh local residents or town residents the right to sort of manage and administer community land in the urban center the issue here first is to understand whether that is really falling within the category of community land is there an inventory of community land as a first step and then there's a whole entire process of within the community land act 2016 that details what needs to be done when it comes to registration when it comes to inventory of community land so that is a whole process but the most important is to identify whether there is actually truly community land in that particular area and how has that particular residential association organized themselves to take up the leadership and registration of their community land thank you thank you thank you so much benad um i understand that we're joined by uh rafael who is able to speak to us in the absence of chief mumena um rafael can i can i hand to you to just very briefly uh input on the zambian context um as they relate to these questions of land based investment and the roles of african traditional authorities rafael are you able to join the discussion just a second i have to promote him to panelist sure excuse me while we wait just a reminder to participants uh in the webinar to please make use of the q and a function in order to pose questions uh directly to the panelists we will be moving into the question and answer portion of this conversation shortly is rafael able to speak to us just a moment i'm trying to promote him apologies for this uh colleagues i was there i do see that uh okay now rafael you're allowed to speak you can turn on your microphone and camera if you like hello good afternoon everyone can you hear me yes we can thank you so much for the opportunity uh rafael chikwampu from zambia here uh land activists um yeah just to give a quick overview about zambia glad to mention though that we have a number of similarities with ganna listening to their presentation in the case of zambia quickly uh broadly land is uh in two categories customer land and state land uh customer land of course being managed by the traditional leaders for and on behalf of the people and as it relates to land large scale investments legally traditional leaders are only allowed to allocate up to 250 hectares of land to whoever you know including uh investors big local foreign uh up to a thousand the minister has to come in and beyond that the president but in reality we see cases where traditional leaders allocate more than 250 hectares you know to outsiders well in some cases it's out of ignorance but also in some cases it's deliberately you know uh may i also quickly mention that uh traditional leaders differ in the way they administer land from you know chieftain to chieftain uh uh and also may i also mention that as much as others you know have the interest of the people at heart they manage the land you know others have become too commercial such that they allocate land without taking into account the interests of the people and that becomes a problem you know additionally in the traditional system it's almost illegal you know to challenge the decisions of the traditional leaders because of their status so people just tend to hold back and observe and complain from a distance on on certain injustices but also may quickly mention yeah may also quickly mention that uh like i did mention the allocation system when a traditional leadership changes from location to location the assistance that are quite enhanced and established in the case of the western province for instance where the system is quite predictable and and and and quite you know explained in in terms of the process but in certain cases it's not predictable changes from one chieftain to another and and they are setting a loop for no gaps you know and and traditional leaders thrive on that to their own benefit so all in all i think we appreciate their role but they're supposed to be a very predictable system and also emphasizing on the need for them to put the interests of the people first before theirs i mean they achieve chiefs because of the people and and the people are the masters over and they're supposed to be treated as such yes so as a summer trucker when they're thank you um if i could try a chief moumena one last time um i understand that he has joined um your majesty are you able to speak to us about uh the context uh in zambia from your perspective particularly your role as a traditional authority uh chief moumena it seems there is an issue with your audio uh i'm not hearing you okay i don't know if we're able to try and fix the issue with uh chief moumena's audio uh it seems the microphone is not working i'm going to move to wrap the panel discussion um at this point by asking um our panelists one final question each and and really asking them uh to provide a short answer and this is a question about um the uh the the kind of presence or absence uh in various contexts uh about information and data uh when it comes to understanding uh where land investments are taking place what information is needed so nana ama i'm going to come to you first and ask in the context of garner um do you have access to information and data uh that um is on proposed land based investments no so we don't have data it doesn't exist at the customary level uh because the transactions are it starts and ends with the traditional leaders and in many cases people even around the palace may not even have details of the information they may see people working in out of the palace knowing that probably these are investors coming to do some work in our area but no it's not i'm easily available about if you go to the state level where the state records on the registration are kept um it's also not easily available because these are kept as state documents and it's not accessible to the public so generally if you are looking at the investments we are looking at the land acquisition we are looking at the proposals for the implementation of the projects we are looking at the benefit sharing arrangements and what is in it for me as a member of the community we are looking at the compensation processes and how i qualify what processes or what modalities are used for compensation and so on all of these things are shrouded in some you know it's not easily available and that creates more problems in fact it intensifies or worsens the situation of impacted communities and customary land rights orders thank you thank you so much thank you um milton coming to you um in your role as part of the land owners committee do you have access to the information that you need in order to make decisions about land investment well before this time there was no access to informations informations were centralized and held by governments but with the new land laws it has made it mandatory on the investments to supply land owners with necessary information this time we have access to the information and data not as it used to be for thank you so much um mamut uh my understanding is that you are working with others to develop a comprehensive digital land information system uh could you speak a little bit about this system does it track um and include data about land owned by traditional authorities okay thank you um yes um the the library and authority um only the fact that a vast portion of our land is customary decided that it's best to formalize this land and then keep them in a systematic fashion so we've developed um we are current we have developed a system that is used to track information for private and public land the customary land information we have not developed a comprehensive system to track um the customary land information but what we've done over the the few few months we've developed a tool or community land information management tool that to primarily focuses on tracking the entire process of the customary land formalization so each community each CSO each donor what activity you are doing at what stage you are in the formalization the tool is able to capture that it's a web-based tool and we are making good use of it at one point in time we're able to superimpose when the government wanted to enter into some carbon enrichment we were to use data from um our from our forest institution we super imposed that with our customary land activity and we know where places where some of these lands are you know and where they are carrying on customary land formalization at the same time and there will be overlap for the for the carbon arrangement so the tool is is currently happening but the tool is not tracking the investment on customary land the tool is not tracking the processes leading to customary land formalization thank you understood thank you so much um and Bernard then we come back to you um uh are the uh land data atlas that's being developed and and worked on in Kenya perhaps you could speak to this and whether it has any implications for tracking land-based investments um but also how it relates uh to community land is Bernard still with us it would seem not okay uh can i attempt to answer yes please go ahead Steven okay um um i think Bernard has just dropped because of network issue but um direct to that question is that we have developed a natural resource atlas as a commission and it is very critical in in tracking natural resources based investments and it will as as most of these natural resources are found within community lands just this week for the last one month the commission has been in a place called Parker in in in a community land in in one of the counties in in in Baringo where they where we the GDC a government corporation building with a production of steam is acquiring a large swaths of land in in in that area so so most of the and that area is unregistered community land so so so there are a lot of natural resources that are found in that in those particular areas and with the development of the natural resources then we are able to track the extent of the exploitation of these natural resources within uh within those community lands and also in in in in other area so and these um the atlas will also help us to identify and map and document all natural resources and this will be critical for the government agencies the county governments as we have said uh and and and and and also the the the the public and and in in as far as position making uh is um is concerned so so that is very key and when we and we have developed actually are finalizing the development of a geoportal that we we can be able to have this and share this information um and it can be accessed by by by the public thank you thank you so much Steven um colleagues thank you all so much we've come to the end of the panel discussion and we'll now move into the question and answer session of today's webinar again a reminder please put your questions in the question and answer tool you'll find an icon that says q and a at the bottom of your screen um and please insert your questions in there we have received quite a few questions and we won't unfortunately be able to answer all of them but I will do my very best um some questions are directed to specific members of the panel so I will try to direct those questions accordingly other questions uh I um are open questions and I will direct those to whichever member of the panel um I think can offer the best answer uh the first question Nana Ama comes to you um and uh it reads as follows can Nana Ama comment on whether Ghana might see legal reforms similar to Sierra Leone's that are aimed at strengthening the rights of customary landowners against the powers of traditional chiefs particularly regarding land acquisition and benefit management then uh there is a question for um uh Bernard I'm not sure Steven if you're able to speak to it um it's about uh is it possible for urban housing estates or residents associations uh to apply for community land trusteeship um then uh Marmad I wonder if you could take this question can you share experiences or thoughts on carbon projects where companies may exploit local communities by offering unfair deals for carbon rights what actions can empower these communities um and uh then for uh yourself um uh Milton uh if you could speak to this question can you discuss how the mix of legal and customary land management practices and the involvement of many actors in the land sector leads to conflicts over jurisdiction and overlapping uh land rights and titles um if I could ask the panelists to respond in the order that I asked them so Nana Ama starting with yourself um Steven if you are able to respond to the question for Bernard then coming to Marmad and then Milton thank you very much so um yes the the situation in Ghana is such that the role of traditional leaders in customary land management is rooted in the history of occupation of various territories in Ghana it is also rooted in the customs and tradition and it is rooted in the way the social organization of various communities in Ghana came about and because of that it is intrinsically woven into the fabric of many Ghanaian communities or groups ethnic groups so to have a law a state law that takes this entirely away is not something that can be possible in the immediate future or in the near sorry in the near future but what we I mean the land act has sought to do is to promote the inclusion because even though customary traditional leaders are custodians actually they are not supposed to act independent of the people it's a collective so if you are a custodian you are the head of the group and you are leading on behalf of the people and so if that is operationalized then it actually comes to the point where the power is decentralized amongst the people and that is what the land act has done trying to make sure that it clarifies the differences in the interest of land and in the powers or the rights that go along with it so I saw one comment saying that we need to operationalize the land act and in fact yes currently there is work going on to have the legislative instrument for the land act we believe that if we all put our hands together to see to the implementation of the act the powers of traditional leaders will actually be demystified and get to the point where there is more inclusion in land governance in Ghana thank you thank you so much yeah thank you very much and I will answer the the question directly to Opa and in Kenya the associations mainly represent and promote the interests of residents living in an area they also improve the conditions to and seek and work with the in partnership with the local authorities to achieve a better services for those for the residents and in Kenya as Opa said we are currently trying to map if there are any community lands in the in the urban settlements and this week we we we've developed the guidelines for community land within the urban the urban setup I think those guidelines will be will be out very soon but if if if there are if we found that there are community lands within the urban urban areas then the act the community land act stipulates that the communities will will organize themselves and and into into an assembly or a group which which might be living that area there's a definition for for for the communities to come together there's ethnicity there is an economic economic activities and the others so so there will be there is no there is no let's say barrier to the residents of that area coming up with the with the with the committee which can be able to advance the registration of that community land which is best within their within their locality but as it is as it is now said we are developing those guidelines together with the minister of lands and we are trying to map the community lands within the urban mostly informal settlements thank you thank you so much Mahmood are you able to speak to the question on carbon projects yes yes I know this question will have come up so yes the issue of carbon project is the new thing on on the market and we know that carbon will happen in these carbon project will happen in these customary communities and of course in our case we're talking about given ownership right of of the land to our local people so in the case of Liberia there was a kind of carbon project initiated that didn't go far but we from the liberal land authority we showed that the requisite benefit that should go back to the community was maintained so we go into the fact that the land rights app provides a five percent whatever resulting concession should be retained by the community the land authority showed that that portion is is maintained in what's our resulting concession but my advice to countries of least developed country anybody wanting to venture into a carbon project you remember that we have some international commitment for example like development of your mdc most of the time the mdc um we as mitigation effort we'll talk about carbon we'll talk about plenty of trees and for carbon sequestration so countries will make some pledges in their mdc it should be it should be convinced of the fact that um you don't get to a situation where you have double counting you have to be doing double counting for you as a country and the trader and also country wants to venture into carbon projects should be came on the fact that you have to establish your carbon registry to know what you have because if you don't know what you have you don't know what to tree somebody will just come and explore the fact that you you are now capacitated to handle any resulting carbon arrangement so it's best to put in some modality before entering into any carbon carbon trading thank you thank you so much um milton are you able to speak to the question about the mix between legal and customary land management practices and how that might lead to conflict well as i said before thank you very much once again as i said before we we we set up committees across the country and engage each other to make sure that we share ideas and reminisce about this we wrote later today to the president as i said before and a new land laws we are brought into force this time we don't have problems with land at all we just hope that new laws can be enforced to make things more favorable for us thank you thank you um in the next round of questions uh nana i'm wondering uh there's a comment here that says that um land laws do not promote or facilitate women's land ownership customary laws give men greater rights than women over property uh i was wondering if you could speak to your thoughts on that comment and also nana i'm if you could speak to this question which is about the issue of traditional leaders disinheriting people from their land seems to be very prevalent in our continent and the question is is there any resolution to this issue then a question for bernard which i will ask you to answer steven the question is the ministry of land is grabbing part of your mandate as the national land commission how will this affect your independence as a commission uh there's a question specifically for dr solomon uh please explain what you mean by informal land tenure and how does land formalization seek to operate are you suggesting that customary land tenure is informal uh and then a question to yourself molton um i'm wondering if you could speak to your experience your community's experience with internal migration and displacement uh that is caused by climate related issues like droughts and flooding and food insecurity uh whether you um have any any experiences of that in the context of cierra leone uh so nana i'm over to you so yes um the gender issues in land administration especially at the customary level and how the state laws are helping to address that i think the fundamental point to make here is that traditionally land is considered mailed i mean the the face of land is a face of a man so to say so if you are talking about land and landed property then the figure that comes to you from the traditional standpoint is land i mean it's a man and that's over the period has actually it has become part of our system such that if you look at any ethnic group and the leadership for managing customary lands it's the main even in matrilineal societies where they inherit from the mother's side it is the male of the mother's side that takes leadership that take decision over the land it is part of the tradition the law actually has made the attempts to neutralize this to make it applicable to both male and female to have rights to to have equal rights to access any type of rights land rights in gana but the point is that and that is really the critical problem the norms around the interpretation and application of the laws also have these gender complexities and therefore you have state agencies who are in charge of the application of the laws and who are also being shaped by the socialization of the you know land being mailed and using that to influence the way you know it is being managed it is being implemented i mean a typical example i want to give briefly is that in the law there is the revenue from landed resources that goes to the traditional authorities we have male female members of traditional authority the law doesn't stipulate that it is to be given only to male members of the traditional leadership it doesn't so if a female traditional leadership goes so long as she is from that ethnic group she qualifies to take the money but no it is to be given to the male even though the the law doesn't say that categorically so i think that we have all been influenced by the culture such that even when the law makes prohibition to protect women there is the temptation the orientation by those applying the law to use norms that are influenced and shaped by our custom in the application of the law and that is why gender discrimination is being perpetuated along the you know system and the the second part about that some chiefs the inheritance some people and actually i just want to clarify that when we are talking about customary land management what we want to distinguish from is the fact that you know the chiefs have roles as community governance they have community governance responsibilities different from the customary land management responsibilities so in recent times especially in some parts of the Ashanti region and so we have seen situations where due to some situations we have some chiefs being distraught from the and so on again some of these things are very traditional based on the customary system to to a large extent the law does not make any provisions on how these things have to be managed but except for the customs and the traditions thank you so much Steven i'm not sure if you're still taking the question i do see Bernard has joined us this was a question about the ministry of lands which is taking part of the mandate of the national land commission in Kenya and how will this affect the independence of the commission i can take that Stephen can turn on other questions thank you if you allow yes go ahead it is it is evidently clear that the independence of the commission is at Geopody however if you look at the reason why Kenyans decided to establish an independent station of commission to manage for them their land it is because of a myriad of issues one of them of course being the excess excessive power and abuse by the state in terms of land and so the Kenyans decided in 2010 to establish a constitutional commission and so if you look at the constitution of kenyan article 67 it provides quite a number of robust functions many still which can only be removed through Arefarela so whether the ministry is taking some functions through legal review i think for me our eye is on the constitution because we are in a we are a constitutional body and it is important for us to just focus on the constitution focus on the constitution our functions based on the constitution without deviating from the constitution because that is why we derive that is where we derive our mandate so it doesn't really matter whatever legislative reviews or whatever functions are taken what really counts for me is the myriad of functions as espoused in article 67 of the board of commission that bestows a number of responsibilities to the nation land commission as an independent constitutional body charged with many functions relating to land including dispute resolution so that is what i would want to say for now thank you so much mamut over to you the question was for you to expand on what you mean by informal land tenure thank you yes amir thank you um maybe it was um on the other side but i don't think i was referring to informal land tenure and there is no way i suggested that um customary land tenure is informal i was just saying that um in in our country in our context our land rights ads have provided that um the ownership to this land must be formalized it has to go through a process where at the end of the day a statutory deed will be issued to these customary communities and then now you can use that for transaction that gave you some uh they gave it you attended recognizes your title shape to the land and not any informal um um second i was talking about so no there is no way customary land tenure is informal let's get that correction clear thank you thank you so much um milton we come to you then on the question of the experience of your community uh when it comes to climate related uh matters so people having to relocate because of flood or drought uh what role or what impact has this had uh if any in the context of Sierra Leone thank you once more well in my area we have a cultural companies investing there and use our cultural areas to not have that problem of displacement but there are certain areas in the country where you have this mining this mining activity a lot of problems for the villagers the places they are they are operating they play these people with these manners of displacement and they are not necessarily meant to be put in place to address this issue before then but the new land laws trying to address those problems are sure thank you thank you so much i'd like to offer the panelists uh the opportunity to give one final closing thought uh just very briefly perhaps one minute uh to just offer a final closing thought uh or comment on on today's conversation um let's start with yourself uh benard and then come to uh nana ama and uh then to milton and end with uh mamund so over to yourself benard for a closing thought yeah i think this is an excellent opportunity where uh the continent is discussing their own land management administration issues focusing on the traditional authorities as you can see their number of challenges and their disparities each country has its own challenges a traditional systems of management administration of land for us in kenya we are very delighted to be cut off this process and we have a lot of experience we have a lot of challenges we have a lot of lessons uh that can actually be used to propel uh the discourse in terms of land management administration so we are very excited it was a very thrilling experience just to walk in and and ensure that our issues is the country are also you know featuring at the continent many of them but then we have also noticed that we also still have considerable a number of opportunities that we can actually leverage on so my final take is for us to be steady uh focus on the low and look at how best we can collectivize community land or community that the taina and ensure that communities are empowered to manage their own land and to secure their own land and safeguard their own interest thank you for watching thank you so much benad uh nana amma your closing thought thank you very much so i would like to say briefly that um yes there are so many challenges in the land sector in Ghana and elsewhere in Africa but um there are also still some progress being made in several forms and i think that anytime we are having the conversation on land in Africa and we we you know it we have a short time to discuss it makes it difficult to even understand the foundations of the land system in Africa and how this translates into solutions so i just want to say that a lot of progress is being made um it is not all about the challenges there are also some for example the traditional leaders some progressive traditional leaders who are making or being part of some very very great innovations to secure land rights for people in their area so for me land is local and so the final battle to secure land rights must be fought at the local level with all the local participants providing solutions that will work for them at the local level thank you thank you so much nana amma uh milton a final thought from you anything you'd like to leave us with yeah well you never know how much you've done until you get stories from other parts of the world how things are going on there and i want to use this opportunity to give a big thank you to all the actors in syragion that have made it possible for us to have this new land lost thank you very much thank you so much milton and finally mamud over to you okay um thank you you know the issue of land is very complex and for us at the level of the library and authority we are grateful to be part of such webinar and look up to more engagement um it seems to mean that the that the african region share similar experience come to the difficulty surrounding land and they gave you a ownership well with all that i can see that there have been some tremendous gain made over the years and it's it's really good that we continue these games so that our customer community can secure title to the island thank you thank you so much uh my sincere thanks uh to the panelists and to all of you for joining us today i think it's quite clear that uh as mamud was saying there are deep commonalities uh around the experiences of communities and traditional authorities when it comes to land-based investment and there was a question about whether i could speak a little bit about some of the southern african context uh and without really opening up a whole new discussion i would say uh that much of the southern african context the context in south africa uh and in uh bozzana and other parts of uh southern africa mirror much of the challenges and much of um the dilemmas that were expressed by our panelists today so i think what emerges is as a key takeaway from this conversation is really just how our struggles mirror each other and how important it is i think to share learnings in platforms like this and so the work of land portal and the work of align is so very important at this point in time to facilitate those cross contextual learnings and so i would add my voice uh to thanking those organizations for organizing this conversation um a webinar like this obviously doesn't happen without a lot of background work and so we extend a word of thanks uh to the colleagues at land portal particularly to neil sorenson uh we also extend our thanks to the team uh at align uh to emily and other colleagues who are part of that team thank you so much uh for the work done in pulling this together and then of course a very big thank you to the panelists who joined us today um our apologies that chief momenna was not able to join us it seemed there were issues with his ability to connect but hopefully uh in a follow up conversation we will be able to have uh the voice of a traditional leader uh thank you so much everybody a final reminder to please uh do the survey um that has been placed into the chat it's really important for us to get feedback um and we appreciate hearing your thoughts on the webinar itself thank you so much and take care wherever you are