6 February 2015: An Expert Group Meeting organized by the Land Policy Initiative (LPI) elaborated the draft LPI Gender Strategy and identified key follow-up actions and roles that the LPI, its partners and other stakeholders can play in ensuring that gender considerations are mainstreamed in land policy processes across the continent.The meeting, which convened from 4-5 February 2015, in Entebbe, Uganda, was organized under the auspices of the African Union (AU) Year of Women’s Empowerment and Development towards Africa’s Agenda 2063, which was launched during the 24th AU Assembly of Heads of State and Government in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

During the expert meeting, several speakers highlighted the importance of enhancing women’s access to, and control of land in order to achieve significant productivity gains, and ensuring that land policy action plans build on gender-disaggregated data, and monitoring and evaluation indicators.

In closing remarks, LPI Chair Joan Kagwanja noted the meeting had contributed to the AU’s vision “by providing an avenue to address the challenges of women’s access to, and control of land as entry points to achieving the goals of the Agenda 2063.” She further noted that the meeting had developed a clear action plan, and “therefore holds LPI accountable for the implementation.” Naome Kabanda, representative of the Uganda Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development, noted that the LPI Gender Strategy “will be quite instrumental as a learning tool for other institutions, and for empowering women,” and highlighted that experiences from Ethiopia and Rwanda offer useful lessons in this regard.

The LPI is a joint programme of the tripartite consortium consisting of the African Union Commission (AUC), the African Development Bank (AfDB), and United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), with a mandate to enhance the use of land to lend impetus to African development processes.

The workshop brought together about 20 experts representing land and gender ministries of AU Member States, Regional Economic Communities (RECs), research institutions, civil society organizations, international organizations, and UN agencies. [ECA Press Release on Meeting] [ECA Press Release on LPI Gender Strategy] [LPI Website] [AU Press Release on 24th AU Summit on Women’s Empowerment]