Science University selected as the southern Africa Node for the Network of Excellence on Land Governance
The Network of Excellence on Land Governance in Africa was launched this week at the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST) in cooperation with the African Land Policy Centre (ALPC), Germany and the World Bank.
NUST through the Department of Land and Property Sciences was selected as the NELGA Southern Africa Node.
NUST Vice Chancellor, Prof Tjama Tjivikua said the NELGA Hub aims to strengthen human and institutional capacity for the implementation of the African Union (AU) agenda on land.
“NELGA is a partnership of leading African universities and research institutions with proven academic leadership in education, training and research on land governance, it currently has more than 50 partner institutions across Africa,” he said.
According to Tjivikua, the key objectives of NELGA are to enhance training opportunities and curricula on land governance in Africa, to promote demand driven research on land policy issues, to connect scholars and researchers across Africa through academic networks and partnerships and to create and diffuse knowledge for monitoring, evaluating and informing land policy reforms and to conduct national and regional land governance related policy dialogues with government organizations, research institutions, civil society and other academia.
“NUST is proud to host this regional hub, for we have an impressive profile and history in land governance, the academic profile has since grow impressively and we are currently offering gin land related discipline up to the Doctorate level, thus we are confident to be your regional hub,” he emphasised.
To date five regional nodes have been selected for establishing NELGA and for improved coordination of NELGA in the different regions. Lead university has bee selected for each AU region, which are regional hubs, to implement and coordinate NELGA activities jointly with other NELGA institutions and NUST is the lead university for the Southern African region.
The vision of the Department of Land And Property Studies is to ‘be a reputable partner for research and educational excellence’, which recognises how essential partnerships are for success of any programme, including the NUST-NELGA Hub.
Caption: Prof. Tjama Tjivikua, Vice Chancellor of NUST (r) with Charl-Thom Bayer, Head of the Land and Property Science at NUST at the launch of the NUST-NELGA Hub.
