About The Zimbabwe Land and Agrarian Network

The Zimbabwe Land and Agrarian Network (ZiLAN) was established in 2012.  In coming together, the members seek to strengthen their respective capacities, complement each other and amplify their collective voices to influence land and agrarian policies and programmes in Zimbabwe. The Membership of the Network comprises organisations involved in research and policy analysis; NGOs working with farmers; farmers’ representative organisations; women and youth in agriculture, interest groups, and land reform and agriculture activists. The members have had informal ties since 2006. Currently the membership of the network is at 27.

The members of the Network are driven by a shared concern about equity, and social justice in access to land, its utilization and the sharing of benefits arising from productive activity. They value the Network for a variety of reasons including: the utilitarian (access to information, services, skills, critical mass for advocacy), ideological (solidarity with smallholder farmers and farm workers, unified voice for civil society organisations) and pragmatic (visibility of issues; sharing experiences; common lobby platform; among others). In addition to its external focus, a large percentage of the Network’s activity is devoted to learning about each other’s skills, sharing knowledge, coaching each other and developing innovation in products and strategies.
 

Vision
Sustainable and shared prosperity among land and agriculture dependent Zimbabweans especially small holders

Mission
To promote creation of an enabling environment for inclusive, prosperous and sustainable land and agriculture based livelihoods.

Our values
Partnerships
Credible evidence-based products
Inclusiveness (farmers and farm workers)
Tolerance of diversity and divergent views
Gender and age sensitivity
Transparency
Accountability
Ethics
Full participation

Value Proposition

• The Network brings together organisations with varied land and agriculture expertise to provide evidence-based policy design and implementation advice on access to land, its utilization and the quality of land and agriculture- based livelihoods.
• The network achieves results at two levels
• increasing member organizations’ knowledge, coordination and voice; and
• Informing and influencing the design and implementation of policies for the benefit of citizens deriving livelihoods for land and agriculture-based activities

Thematic areas of work
ZiLAN’s work is currently organized under four themes namely: land tenure, production, markets and collective farmers’ voices with women and youth as a cross cutting theme.

Land Tenure
On land tenure, key focus areas for the network are:

• land rights for all
• gender issues and women land rights
• residential rights of farm workers
• youth access and livelihoods

Production
The cluster focuses on issues relating to:

• increasing productivity of small scale farmers
• improving access to agricultural inputs for smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe
• climate change adaptation and land quality issues,
• seed sovereignty, inadequate capacities of key actors (producers and agents working with small scale farmers), appropriate technologies (mechanization) and financing for the agriculture sector

Markets
Key focus areas for the cluster are:

• innovative strategies for input supply and marketing
• enhancing rural incomes through agriculture

Collective Farmers’ Voices
The cluster aims at:

• promoting inter-linkages between local and apex farmer organisations
• improving the influence of farmers on markets and policies