Conference Agenda

The capacity building project “Implementation of Academic Land Administration Education in Ethiopia for Supporting Sustainable Development is a bilateral project between Austrian (BOKU Vienna, TU Vienna) and Ethiopian universities (DMU, BDU), funded by the Austrian Development Agency.

EduLAND2 is a trigger for the design and running a research-driven bachelor curriculum at DMU, for joint problem-oriented research, for the building academic staff capability, for joint research activities and for the preparation of demand driven community services – all on the topic of land administration.

Gender mainstreaming and the principle of equal partnerships between all project partners are central elements of EduLAND2. The presentation considers the conceptual design and the realisation for guaranteeing an equal partnership in the project. Based on the experiences gained by project members in EduLAND2, challenges and success factors for a successful and equal partnership are outlined. Recommendations for a long-term and successful equal partnership are given.

Second Level Land Certificates (SLLC) have been issued to 10,634 households on 36,590 parcels. Proportionally, 63.9%, 21.5% and 14.5% of the certified households are married couples, female-headed and male-headed households, respectively. As married couples are registered with equal rights on their joint holding, females with recognized land rights are much higher than males.

Totally, 154 technicians are trained on rural cadaster and land registration. Proportionally, 28.6% of the graduates are female. Yearly percentage of female graduates varies from 26.3% to 45.5%. In 2019, there are 219 trainees attending courses on rural cadaster and land registration; of which 37% are female trainees. The female trainees at different levels vary from 30% to 51.9%. Proportionally, there are more female trainees in the current attendees than graduated ones. This breakthrough using a twin track approach enhances land governance and contributes to SDGs goals, targets and indicators.

Breakthrough, Equal rights, Female-headed, Male-headed, Married couples

This article explores a renewed approach to research centre. It uses desktop review and interviews with key informants from African universities to investigate the specific features that should characterise a research centre on land governance in Africa. The investigation also focuses on how to package and implement research centre concepts in land governance. It uses the SCImago Journal Rank platform to access data and analyse (and present) the research capacity country rankings of top 10 countries in Africa, as a way of understanding how African countries rank in general research outputs and in specific land governance subjects. It also deals on how to operationalise research centres in land governance to enable improved African-wide research outcomes. By way of an outcome, the article presents a new research centre concept for catalysing innovative research (learning) in land governance.

ADLAND “Advancing Collaborative Research in Responsible and Smart Land Management in and for Africa” is a research model based on a strategic partnership for scientific, academic support in capacity development in land management to selected African universities. Grounded on the principle that African universities could act as decisive nodes for knowledge creation and exchange, a network of universities from the global North collaborate with them in developing human capacity.

ADLAND activities include capacity development workshops, research writing workshops with jointly written scientific papers, curricula development and review, and staff exchange to enhance knowledge transfer. The outcomes of such activities have successfully involved in the past 10 months more than 115 participants from 16 different African countries. With this perspective, Africa is becoming a place rather than a subject of research and education.

A combination of push and pull factors are stimulating geospatial innovation to respond to land administration challenges. Yet, as these alternative tools begin to move from development to implementation, we still know little about how the institutional environment helps or hinders innovation and importantly, scaling of these technologies to deliver impact. This paper contributes to this gap by applying the Technological Innovation System (TIS) framework in the context of an ongoing project in East Africa where four new geospatial tools are being developed and tested as alternative land tools. The outcomes of the analysis provides country-specific insight into how actors, their interactions, and the institutional arrangements impacts adoption and scaling of the geospatial tools, but also presents a generalized view of the extent developing countries are ready for disruptive geospatial innovation in land administration and raising awareness of those institutional aspects that are helping or hindering innovation.