Africa Faith & Justice Network (AFJN), a Catholic organization based in Washington DC which educates and advocates for a transformation of U.S. policies toward Africa in collaboration with the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) is organizing a Pan African Workshop on Land Grabbing to be held in Nairobi ahead of the Papal Visit to the country.
Speaking to AMECEA Online News, AMECEA Justice, Peace and Caritas Department Mr. Antony Mbandi said that the workshop will go a long way to address the management of one natural resource that cannot be multiplied.
“Land is one resource that however much we wished to expand or multiply it, we cannot yet it is the most abused and the most mismanaged,” he said.
According to the Executive Director of AFJN, Rev. Father Aniedi Okure, OP, there are two major issues that pose a constant challenge to African continent; the issue of governance and land grabbing and the two are closely related.
“Most African governments make decisions without considering the common good. How do these decisions affect our people, and the future generations? How do they benefit the community? There are some of the questions many African governments ignore,” he said.
According to him, the issue of land grabbing affects all African countries “The entire continent is affected and most of these land grabbers are foreigners, foreign corporations, multinational corporations registered in Africa with links abroad,” he said adding that these people often come with all kinds of promises for development, which in most cases turns out to be untrue.
“They take the land almost for nothing, they sign the lease for as many as 99 years which is literally give away and they take the prime land and in so doing they also displace many people and local communities. They also private drinking water sources that belong to these local communities and so it is a big problem,” he explained.
He blames it on lack of good governance, whereby the government enters into deals that does not respect the common good and does not think of the future consequences for the communities.
The problem is big and so we decided to come back to the Church which has communities throughout the continent so that it can mobilize its own network to fight this issue.
Since last year, AFJN has been collaborating with SECAM to plan for the workshop and SECAM proposed Nairobi as the venue for the workshop and AMECEA Secretariat as a coordinating center.
The workshop which is scheduled to take place between 22ndand 26th November will be attended by the Justice and Peace Coordinators from All Conferences in Africa. According to Fr. Okure, representatives from civil society organizations will also attend. So far, they have brought on board International Cooperation for Development and Solidarity (CIDSE), Oxfam, Action Aid, Catholic Relief Services among others.
AMECEA Justice, Peace and Caritas Department, SECAM Justice and Peace Coordinator and two representatives from AFJN Fr. Okure and his colleague Fr. Barthelemy Bazemo held a three-days meeting at AMECEA Secretariat in Nairobi from Tuesday 8th -10th September, to deliberate on the conference.
AMECEA Justice, Peace and Caritas department is calling upon all AMECEA Countries to fully embrace the conference, support it and participate in it fully.
By Pamela Adinda, AMECEA Online News