LEGEND CHALLENGE FUND
The LEGEND Challenge Fund was designed to support the development and testing of innovative approaches and civil-society - business partnerships for better land governance in agricultural investments and land and natural resource based value chains.
Following a competitive call in 2016 for proposals including civil society and private business partners, seven projects were selected and implemented during 2017-19, in five African countries: Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Sierra Leone.
These projects focussed on the application of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Governance of Tenure (VGGT) to protect the tenure rights of land holding communities and small scale farmers to improve existing agricultural land investments by international companies, and to establish new, inclusive community-business partnerships. They did this by:
- strengthening due diligence processes in large scale agricultural investments and supply chains, and
- developing new tools and approaches for land rights mapping and documentation and supporting the development of new business and employment opportunities in partnership with companies, through community-based organisations.
Five projects took place in specific countries, and two had a multi-country focus in east and southern Africa. Three projects focused on land tenure risks and governance issues in large scale investments and three on development of community-based enterprise partnerships that required secure community and farmer land rights; one project sought to do both.
The fund was managed by KPMG and technical backstopping and learning support for the grantees and the programme as a whole was provided by Natural Resources Institute (NRI), University of Greenwich.
Information on the objectives and outcomes of each project is available via the links below. LEGEND has also produced a summary briefing note and a full report on practical and strategic lessons from the challenge fund and other responsible land investment pilot projects in sub- Saharan Africa: Investing Responsibly in Agricultural Land - Lessons from responsible land investment pilots in sub-Saharan Africa’.
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Applying the VGGT to the responsible development of a large-scale oil palm plantation in Sierra Leone
Implementers: Solidaridad and Natural Habitats Sierra Leone (NHSL)
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From Commitment to Practice (C2P)
Implementers: Landesa and Illovo Sugar
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Investing in land tenure and management to assure sustainable tourism revenues, natural resource utilisation and conservation in the Yaeda-Mangola area in Northern Tanzania
Implementers: VSF Belgium, UCRT and Dorobo Safaries
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Piloting the ‘Community Land Value Chain’ in Zambezia, Mozambique
Implementers: ORAM and Terra Firma
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Safeguarding livelihoods of women baobab harvesters through improved land and natural resources governance
Implementers: MICAIA Foundation and Baobab Products Mozambique (PBM).
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Building Sustainable Partnerships for the Implementation of Responsible Investments in Agricultural Land (SPIRAL)
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A New Approach to Land Tenure and Sustainability Verification: Measuring and Certifying Performance in the Sugar Sector Implementers: Bonsucro and TMP Systems Geographical focus: Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia The project aimed to encourage sugar producers and supply chain actors to adopt common land tenure governance standards through Bonsucro as an industry organisation. It developed and applied on-line tools to establish a land risk profile for sugar production sites across eastern and southern Africa and worked with small-scale growers’ organisations to develop and test farm management modules intended to business management and land use while strengthening users’ tenure rights. |