Navigation
Polls
Does land redistribution in southern Africa achieve poverty reduction and livelihood improvement objectives?
Yes
 No
Polls | Results
 
Document Actions

Communication Plan and User Engagement

The project will develop a comprehensive and site-specific user engagement and outreach strategy in its first, six-month planning phase.

The research team enjoys good links to policy networks in each provincial study site, in the national arena and more broadly in the region, and are thus well placed to engage effectively with policy processes at different levels. The strategy will include the following elements:

Networking

  • Engaging government departments concerned with land reform early on in the project in discussions on research design, implementation and outputs (Department of Land Affairs/Provincial Dept of Agriculture in Limpopo Province, South Africa; AREX and Ministry of Lands in Masvingo, Zimbabwe; and the Ministry of Land, Resettlement and Rehabilitation in Namibia.
  • Working with policy advocacy/implementing NGOs in all three study sites (Nkuzi Development Association in South Africa; CARE and SAFIRE in Zimbabwe and the Desert Research Foundation in Namibia.
  • Interacting with the SADC Land Reform Technical Facility, Botswana.
  • Liaison with donors, including DFID country and regional offices.

Communication

  • Developing a state-of-the-art website hosted by PLAAS as the main portal for the project, but extensively linked with free download facilities for all working papers, briefing notes and project news.
  • Wide dissemination of key findings to academic/research audiences (via working papers, journal articles and a book), as well as user audiences (all the above, but also policy briefings, both written and verbal).
  • Links developed with IDS-hosted information services – including ID21, Livelihoods Connect and ELDIS – as well as international focal points for land reform issues (at Oxfam, FAO, World Bank) for global dissemination.

While the project will develop an overall strategy for engagement with users, this will necessarily have to be attuned to local circumstances (particularly in the Zimbabwe context, given on-going political sensitivities). The project team have excellent existing contacts in all three research sites (see below), and, despite the challenges, are confident of the feasibility and ultimate success of the project. Zimbabwe work in particular will build on currently on-going research being conducted by IDS/UZ/AREX in the proposed study areas. In all three countries preliminary discussions with government officials (particularly at provincial levels) and donors (including informal interactions with DFID-Pretoria and a donor round-table discussion in Zimbabwe in mid-2005 hosted by DFID) have consistently shown high demand for the project focus.