MAP Liberia Land Platform embarks on massive decentralization in South-eastern Liberia

The Multi-Actor Platform on Land Governance and Responsible Agricultural Investment in Liberia has completed extensive county and regional levels stakeholders’ engagement activities in the southeastern region of Liberia.

It is part of its decentralization plan to have the MAP Platform fully established and well recognized across Liberia. According to the Communications and Reporting Officer of the MAP Liberia Land Platform, Mr. Haje L. Paasewe, the engagement and outreach activities targeted stakeholders from the government.

The Government representatives included the County Land Administrators, County Agriculture Coordinators, Gender Focal Persons, Inspectors of the Environmental Protection Agency and representatives of the Forestry Development Authority.

Also, Civil Society Organizations working in the land and agriculture sectors, private sector institutions, academia such as community colleges and universities, and local community representatives were key targets for the engagement exercises. The stakeholders’ engagement and outreach activities were executed in two phases.

Paasewe particularized phase one to be a county-level convening, dealing with the different stakeholders at specific county level, while elucidating that phase two was a regional forum that brought together a selected number of the stakeholders from the five counties (Grand Gedeh, River Gee, Sinoe, Grand Kru and Maryland) so as to review the cross-cutting issues emerging from the various counties and to also design some concrete next steps moving forward.

Speaking to reporters, the MAP Communications and Reporting Officer stated that before the regional forum, there was a simplified training conducted on contents and processes of Multi-Stakeholders Partnerships (MSPs and MAPs) as part of the preparatory steps to having the actors propelled to take on platform activities.

Towards the end of the regional forum, a core team was established as an interim body that will work in consultation with the secretariat of the MAP Liberia Land Platform during these initial decentralization processes, until the Platform gets officially launched in the southeast, which when achieved will bring to 2, the number of Sub-regional MAPs/MSPs established across the country, Paasewe concluded.