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Recently, we virtually “met up” with Stella Rose Akutui, the Capacity Building and Networking Officer with LANDnet. Stella has been one of many amazing Ugandan women driving the women’s land rights agenda – we celebrate her achievements and the avenues around which Uganda is leading the thinking and action on land rights in Africa.

We are looking for an experienced social safeguards expert who can use their stakeholder and community engagement experience to improve land governance scenarios during infrastructure investment.  This opportunity will see you build solutions with LEI staff for improved land tenure results in the infrastructure sector, expand your networks and work across Africa, Asia and the Pacific with a range of clients. We are initially seeking a consultant role, with potential for more permanent employment arrangements.

We are looking for our next dedicated colleague with experience in land tenure recording and registration, survey, and geospatial solutions for land administration. 

The LEI team from our homes or largely vacated office, continue through the pandemic to consult virtually on advisory teams for projects in Nauru, Pakistan, Philippines, Punjab-India, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam. Beyond our locked borders of Australia, our hard-working project teams in the Mekong and Indonesia have continued to show astounding resilience and adaptation to maintain project momentum. They are continuing to achieve project objectives as they work through issues with their trusted partners and co-implementers most often colleagues from government and civil society.

The poor quality and availability of spatial data has always been one of the biggest challenges in spatial planning in Indonesia, and most importantly in Papua. Further constraining spatial planning and sustainable development challenges, though, is the severely limited technical capacity of local government staff. Recognising this, Papua Spatial Planning – a bilateral programme between the Government of Indonesia and UK, implemented by LEI and Daemeter – has developed a structured and customised training known as On-the-Job Training (OTJT).

Dramatic population growth rates and rising demand for increasingly limited resources have pushed land governance and administration to the fore across Africa.  The East African Community (EAC) comprises of the Republics of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan and Uganda and the United Republic of Tanzania. The sustained growth of the region; exponential developments in technology associated with land governance and administration; the entry of new actors; and the broader social, political and economic dynamics of the region present a mix of challenges and opportunity.

There have been many articles about the impacts of COVID-19 in the international development space – perhaps best evidenced in our sector by the 100+ articles on land and COVID-19 on the LandPortal blog. Development partners and practitioners alike have needed an unprecedented level of adaptiveness and flexibility to continue activities alongside this global challenge. Now approaching two years into the pandemic, we can begin to take stock. And so, in this article, we want to explore just some of the measures taken in one of LEI’s projects, and what these measures have meant in terms of project delivery of intended outcomes. This ‘taking stock’ is also important as we look to the future of our sector: are there intrinsic lessons from the pandemic response that we will take forward?

On Monday 7 June we celebrated 20 years of the business registration of Land Equity International. Tony Burns, a founder of the business and Managing Director Kate Rickersey (15 years with LEI) look forward to reflecting on and sharing some of our stories, history and forward thinking on land administration in the coming months as we celebrate our successes and the longevity of our consulting practice.

The Mekong Region Land Governance (MRLG) project, together with our partners at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Land Portal, will organise the 3rd Mekong Regional Land Forum (MRLF2021) in the coming weeks, entitled “Land tenure in Mekong forest landscapes: advancing the recognition of customary rights and responsible investment practices”.  This forum will bring together reform-minded actors within and beyond the region to engage in in-depth, interactive debate on issues that cut to the core of the most pressing challenges facing tenure security in forest areas and the impacts of  agribusiness investment.

We are very happy to be supporting and promoting the global theme for the 2021 International Women’s Day:  ‘Women in Leadership: Achieving an Equal Future in a COVID-19 World’.  Here at LEI were pursue equality from within the organisation with women making up 2/3 of our leadership team. We are fortunate to have many long term staff who are driving us in our mission. We strongly believe in being an agile and flexible employer, offering full and part-time employment and flexible leave options to balance parenting duties and pursue higher education qualifications.

The rich discussions amongst the MRLG team, our partners and national-based gender consultants is already driving more gender-responsive actions and outcomes as part of all workstream activities. COVID19 may have thrown a curveball for many of our activities, this one, however, can be considered a silver lining.