Programmes | ViSA Africa
Our Intervention Areas
Our approach combines research, action, and advocacy to create lasting impact
Research and Innovations
Under research and innovations, we engaged with local stakeholder groups to understand their issues and challenges and explore solution pathways and conditions for success together.
Action for Change
Action for Change involves co-transforming research findings into small-scale actions or projects, which are then piloted and monitored with key stakeholder groups. Change progress is also analyzed and documented for scaling up or replication purposes.
Policy Advocacy
We understand and acknowledge the need to come together to reach better and higher impacts through a consistent push for change in national and global policies. It requires spaces for policy alignment, strategic meetings, networking, and careful alliance.
Integrating legitimate community rights into restoration and conservation programs
To understand the socio-economic impact of land restoration and forest conservation policies and programmes on rural land access and use by dependent communities, ViSA Africa carried out participatory mapping in the communes of Bembèrèkè and Gogounou, two villages bordering the Trois Rivières forest.
The results highlighted significant implementation challenges related to institutional dysfunctions and a power imbalance that threaten the principles of participatory management and resource conservation. For instance, there were numerous conflicts between local populations and government officials, and deep mistrust existed between these two groups, who were supposed to collaborate on implementing the participatory forest management plan.
This plan, intended to serve as the foundation for including riparian populations in management and decision-making, has instead become an instrument of exclusion and discrimination, primarily harming the most vulnerable groups, including women, pastoralist communities, and migrants.
Multi-stakeholder dialogue to reverse paradigms in forest conservation and land governance policies and strategies
To increase awareness among stakeholders about issues related to current conservation policies and their impact on the legitimate land rights of riparian communities, ViSA Africa initiated a series of multi-stakeholder dialogues at local, regional, and national levels.
They organised workshops to train key stakeholders on the concept of degradation neutrality, its principles, and approach. This training also enhanced participants' understanding of UNCCD land tenure decisions and Benin's commitments.
Working closely with the UNCCD focal point, ViSA Africa hosted a workshop for local community representatives, development officers, officials from the General Directorate of Forests, and technical managers from municipalities to discuss the implications of international and national commitments for local populations, with a focus on land and forest resource rights.
The group discussed how to integrate restoration and conservation policies into community development plans and examined protective measures to secure communities' land rights. A roadmap was proposed for each municipality.
Participatory advocacy for the recognition and protection of legitimate land rights of vulnerable communities, especially women
In 2023, ViSA Africa, in partnership with several CSOs working on land issues, launched an advocacy campaign to promote the recognition and protection of land rights for vulnerable communities, particularly women, by policy decision-makers.
As part of this campaign, civil society actors received training on the technical guide for implementing VGGT (FAO Voluntary Guidelines on Land Governance) and its importance for advocating on behalf of vulnerable communities. Likewise, several international agreements ratified by Benin that are relevant to advocacy efforts were examined and discussed.
In 2024, two campaigns to promote women's land rights took place at regional and national levels, in collaboration with the Global Convergence of Struggles for Land, Water and Seeds in West Africa, to highlight social inequalities and specifically the land injustices faced by these women.