Land pathway getting on their Learning route!

Post by Willem Bettink, originally posted on IFAD social reporting blog



This second day has been very dense with discussion and sharing of experiences that has moved the land pathway onto developing its initial thoughts for the learning route(s). The morning session opened by presenting a first digestion of thoughts based on the country experiences presented yesterday. The experiences with various local land use planning shared the concern of the risk to exclude some particular groups of the local population from access to land in particular pastoralists, and very poor women.

An innovative approach by the SWADE-project in Swaziland enabled the integration of local land use planning into local development planning involving the communities throughout the process. This led Sharefair participants in the land pathway to consider if they should address the local land issues in the broader context of a sustainable livelihoods plan instead of as a stand alone issue.

These reflections fitted well with the presentation of the scoping paper¹ prepared by Fiona Flintan, which provides an overview of the benefits and challenges of customary land tenure systems. These include aspects such as: a focus on groups versus individuals; what factors influence the development of the customary system; and what are the challenges for various stakeholders involved.

But how does all of this work in practice-what was learned so far? There needs to be an enabling environment in place; achieving a shared vision and consensus between stakeholders; provision of legal backing for defining roles and responsibilities and a CBO with strong leadership, ownership and capacity.

Halfway though the day the land pathway opened its doors to Ariel Halpern of PROCASUR who completed his Odyssey leaving Chile last Saturday arriving today at the Sharefair at ILRI in Addis. For sure he had not lost his energy to stimulate us with his personal reflections and thoughts. He took us through what is known as the learning route –a tool developed and successfully delivered to support small farmers, women and youth in about 23 countries by PROCASUR.

Learning Routes has proven to be a flexile tool adapting it’s use to a diversity of topics(e.g.local government, land, gender, culture assets, rural business, rural ICTs, rural youth) and a wide range of people and countries specificity. Ariel defined the learning route fundamentals to be:

• Recognize that in rural areas it is possible to find successful solutions to existing and common problems which can be adapted and multiplied in other context; and


• Use a learning strategy that enables participants to acquire direct knowledge and arouse their curiosity and interest in learning.

Mino Hardi from Madagascar, who participated in the learning route on Women and Land rights, said that she started the learning route with a lot of ideas about what to do. The powerful experience for her was to visit communities and see how people had achieved putting similar ideas she had into practice –this gave an enormous push to her motivation to pursue her ideas once she returned form this learning route to Madagascar.

At this deep hour into the day, maps of Africa were pulled out! Participants were asked to map out the challenges they face in their countries, what they have to learn and what experiences/practices they can share. Enough for now, but more to follow tomorrow from this committed lot of practitioners!!!

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[1] Recognizing, formalizing and supporting customary land tenure in multi-use landscapes- Scoping paper (work in progress) by Fiona Flintan for the International Land Coalition.

Learning pathways the heart of the Addis Ababa Share Fair

When we began planning the content focus of the Addis Ababa Share Fair, we looked for a unifying process that we could use to focus our discussions and exchanges on the 4 main themes chosen forn the event: climate change, land, livestock, and water. Our IFAD colleagues Roxy and Willem suggested we talk to Ariel Halpern from PROCASUR in Chile. He was working on something they call 'learning routes' - on the PROCASUR web site (see also this presentation).

These learning routes take anything up to three weeks - which is MUCH longer than our planned Addis Ababa Share Fair. But we could borrow and adapt the original idea for use in Addis Ababa ...

Using the name 'learning pathways,' we have devised a process as follows for the 4 major thematic conversations at our Share Fair:

Each pathway will integrate the key thematic knowledge processes and major knowledge spaces in a participatory process of mapping, sharing and connecting the people attending.

1. The first phase is ‘mapping’, where the participants gain an overview, and collectively characterize the activities and talents in the theme. We want to ‘map’ what’s happening in the thematic area in Africa, by whichever way best suits the group. We want to map what the people participating are doing. This could result in some kind of high level gap analysis based on the knowledge of people in the session.

2. The second phase is ‘sharing’, where selected initiatives – chosen to highlight innovative or important experiences - are exposed and explored in a peer assist mode. We want to hear and share diverse experiences – from grassroots, science and policy, and intermediary levels. We want to look across the full process of knowledge (and information and data) creation, sharing, communication, and use. This should result in a rich dialogue and conversations where promising ideas and experiences are surfaced, get feedback, and can be taken forward.

3. The third phase is ‘brokering’, where people get together in facilitated discussions that foster collaboration and the forming of future joint ventures. This should result in people getting together to collaborate in new or extended activities that create, share put knowledge to work in the theme.

Read more about the approach we will use ...

Find out about learning routes on the IFAD social reporting blog

The share fair web site and wiki

Arial Halpern from PROCASUR is attending the Addis Ababa Share Fair!