Prof Ruth Hall - PLAAS director. Image: Ruvan BoshoffThe Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) will attend the Second International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD+20) in Colombia.
This follows a successful meeting at the African Union’s (AU) sixth Conference on Land Policy in Africa (CLPA) in Ethiopia in November, where University of the Western Cape (UWC) Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Academic, Prof Monwabisi Ralarala, joined PLAAS at a high-level meeting of African Ministers and Vice-Chancellors. The Government of Colombia, with the support of the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization, is hosting this conference from 24 to 28 February after the first sitting in 2006.
The conference will bring together academics, government representatives, civil society, social movements and others to address issues of land justice, food sovereignty and access to natural resources for all. The event is expected to mark a turning in global responses to Africa remaining marginal in the global economic system but strategically significant as a site of mineral extraction, land acquisition and potential large-scale food production. The central political question for African countries is: how should they position themselves in a global struggle over a new world order, and with whom should they align?
Prof Moenieba Isaacs - PLAAS academic coordinator. Image: Ruvan BoshoffUWC has been asked by the AU to work with the delegation of African officials attending the conference, and to create and provide Africa-centred calls at the conference that align with Africa’s realities. PLAAS has hosted two planning meetings with over 50 participants from governments, academia, civil society, social movements and parliamentary institutions. During these meetings, working groups created four key concepts to focus on during the conference:
- Food sovereignty, seed systems and land/seed grabs
- Extractivism, critical minerals and geopolitics of land
- Agrifood trade, value addition, rural–urban linkages and investments
- People-led resistance, agrarian reform and political leverage
The second International Academic Conference - Land Life and Society - will take place at the University of Cartagena and will be co-hosted by PLAAS, from 20 to 22 February. This conference follows PLAAS’s successful International Conference - Land, Life and Society - at UWC in October 2025, where over 280 delegates from 53 countries converged in Cape Town. The 2025 conference resulted in the Cape Town Declaration, which sounded a global call for the redistribution of natural resources amid the mounting crises of climate change, poverty and inequality. The second conference will create a declaration that will be taken to ICARRD+20 for leaders, global organisations and policy makers to hear.
Attending on behalf of the UWC are:
- Prof Ruth Hall - PLAAS director
- Prof Moenieba Isaacs - PLAAS academic coordinator
- Nkanyiso Gumede - PLAAS researcher
- Deshnee Subramany - PLAAS communications manager
- Emeritus Prof Ben Cousins - PLAAS founder
