(Ecofin Agency) - Land Policy Initiative (LPI), in partnership with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the European Union (EU), have launched in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) a pilot project to mainstream land governance challenges in agriculture. This took place at a workshop co-organized by LPI and the DRC’s government.

“The pilot project will help the country mainstream land governance in agricultural strategies and plans, and ensure land reform programs secure land rights, provide equal access to land, and promote responsible agriculture investments to advance agriculture and rural transformation. It will generate evidence, raise awareness and build the DRC’s capacity to better address concerns such as unequal access to land by women, insecurity of land tenure, especially in communal lands, inadequate mapping and land use planning to guide land-related investments,” said a statement published to this end.

“The project will give us an opportunity to integrate land governance indicators in our results and monitoring frameworks for tracking agriculture sector programs at the national level,” said Leon Ntondo Lumuka, Secretary General of the Land Ministry.

Participants of the workshop agreed to, in order to efficiently monitor the project, “establish a formal task force to develop the country business plan for mainstreaming land governance in the country’s National Agriculture Investment Programme (NAIP); and to integrate the project into the work plan of the National Commission for Land Reform”.

LPI is a joint tripartite consortium comprised of the Africa Union Commission (AUC), African Development Bank (AfDB) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).