Curricula Review

Experts have observed that land-related academic curricula are not necessarily well-equipped to respond to Africa’s realities and the different dimensions of land governance and administration. They tend to be rather technical and are most of the time lacking in the social/cultural, political, economic and environmental aspects crucial to land governance. Issues, such as land tenure, political economy related to land, and autochthonous populations’ ties to land and cultural/traditional land governance, are rarely addressed, despite being key to understanding land governance in Africa. In addition, research is often not responsive to Africa’s needs partly due to inadequate resources, limited access to quality data and sometimes weak analytical capacities. Against this background, the African Land Policy Centre (ALPC) has facilitated the development of the “Guidelines for the Development of Curricula on Land Governance in Africa”, acting in support of the implementation of the AU Declaration on land issues and Challenges in Africa – in particular, the call for Member States to “Build adequate human, financial, technical capacities to support land policy development and implementation”. 

The improvement of curricula and the learning opportunities offered by member universities represent the pillar of the NELGA capacity development strategy. In addition to the organisation of sensitisation workshops on curricula guidelines, ALPC and GIZ have set up technical and financial resource mobilisation mechanisms in response to the request for support by NELGA member universities regarding the reviewing of their land-related curricula. So far, over 20 NELGA member institutions have received such support, and most of them have already successfully integrated the guidelines into their academic curricula.