Development Ratings

African Initiatives focuses on promoting rights. It addresses this intangible area through practical and tangible actions. The principle rights focus broadens out into subsectors all related to the central theme: land use rights, property rights, women’s rights, and rights to an education. Communities are helped to have greater decision-making control over income, land and property use, greater access to credit based on property and income generating activities, and to hold authorities and individuals to account for their actions and responsibilities.

• The Pastoralist and Hunter-Gatherer Programme in Tanzania works with semi-nomadic peoples, such as the Maasai, Datoga, Akie, Sonjo and Hadza. The programme secures access to land for pastoralists, including for women in their own right. Customary land rights in wildlife and conservation areas are a bone of contention. Pastoralists’ cultural identities relate directly to their traditional use of land, over millennia in some cases. Land Use Plans (LUPs) have been implemented for 42 villages. African Initiatives used inter-community LUPs to resolve a land use conflict between the Maasai and the Sonjo, a group that has farmed an isolated area of Maasai territory for centuries. Other land use conflicts have been settled. A village registration and identification scheme was set up to ensure land tenure security for valid inhabitants and to identify invalid migrants. Maasai women traditionally have no land or property rights. A Maasai women’s group has secured livestock, grazing and water rights for a homestead or boma for vulnerable Maasai women. The pilot boma is using livestock management and sales to economically benefit the women as an example to neighbouring communities.

• Breaking Barriers: The Right to Education pilot project in Tanzania: Only some 3% of girls in Tanzania are enrolled in secondary school. Awareness is being raised about the barriers to girls’ education, such as negative family attitudes, domestic workload, cultural pressure to marry at a young age, and discrimination in favour of boys in times of poverty. Individuals are helped to resist traditional demands by knowing their right to receive an education. Examples of the economic benefits to families and communities of female education on earnings and micro-business potential are being demonstrated. Future plans include an education project to benefit 50,000 girls. This will involve strengthening girls’ security (safe transport to school, latrines, etc.) and providing subsidies for fees. Communities are being trained to raise education funds locally and to integrate AIDS work into the curriculum. A previously poorly run private Maasai secondary school has been handed over to a partner to manage.

• Sustainable Livelihoods and Women’s Rights project in Ghana: Farmer field schools run training sessions and provide practical support. Methods introduced include organic farming, sustainable agriculture, soil and water conservation, harvest storage, inter-cropping, and integrating livestock with crop farming. A network of organisations has been set up working on women’s rights in relation to domestic violence and female genital mutilation (FGM). Family planning information and access to contraception is being made available as well as awareness of HIV/AIDS. Support for the Northern Advocate newspaper increases local knowledge about issues, rights and resources available to communities. The evidence surrounding agrochemical misuse and related local medical issues has been collated and will form part of a project to spread this information to farmers and their families.

• UK schools, youth and community groups: A Global Resources Centre provides information to support development education teaching. Future plans include emphasising the Cost of Conservation (the negative impact of conservation policies on local communities), trade (in)justice for Ghanaian tomato farmers, and highlighting policies that undermine African communities’ rights and livelihoods.

African Initiatives makes grants to local partners working on social justice. In northern Tanzania, it works with a Maasai women’s group, PWC, and with a community trust, CRT. In northern Ghana, the charity works with a farmers’ association, ZOVFA, a media network, RMN, and a community centre, CSRC. The five organisations promote access to land, education and services, sustainable livelihoods, rights for women, and rights to use and control natural resources. In addition to grants, African Initiatives contributes programme design, problem solving, monitoring, evaluation, and impact assessment.