SALT LAKE CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Medici Land Governance (MLG) has signed an MOU with the Sustainable Development Goals Center for Africa (SDGCA) to advance Africa’s overall development agendas and the SDGs 2030 agenda over the course of two years, with option for renewal. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which originated with the United Nations, are essential guiding principles for MLG, a public benefit corporation that provides software development and services related to land titling and government services. This latest MOU partners MLG with the SDGCA, an autonomous not-for-profit international organization that supports governments, civil society, businesses, and academic institutions in efforts sharing their experience and expertise.
Among the SDGs most relevant to the work MLG and SDGCA will conduct:
- SDG 5: Achieving gender equality and empower all women and girls;
- SDG 10: Reducing inequality within and among countries;
- SDG 11: Making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable;
- SDG 15: Protecting, restoring, and promoting sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss;
- SDG 17: Strengthening the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.
The SDGCA and MLG share objectives promoting gender equality and empowerment, reducing inequalities within and among countries, making inclusive cities and human settlements, protecting and restoring the environment, and strengthening partnership. “These SDGs are intended to be concrete, measurable and results focused,” Dr. Ali El Husseini, CEO of MLG, says, “With The SDGCA, MLG will develop a detailed collaborative framework that also is agile and flexible enough to addressing and incorporating new issues of environment and sustainability every six months or as they emerge.” He adds, “With our experience in data collection and committed investment on the continent, together with The SDGCA, we can properly, realistically and accurately enjoy benefits not only for our respective broader communication efforts but also, more importantly, for seeking out additional channels and avenues for financing and collaboration.” This includes fundraising efforts reaching out to the public and private sectors, as well as other multilateral and bilateral institutions, development banks and foundations. “Gender equity, for example, is a prominent influencer of MLG’s product design,” El Husseini says. “This supports The SDGCA’s focus on fostering inclusive dialogue with policymakers to share best practices in creating opportunities for women and those who historically have been socially excluded.”
Caroline Makasa, Acting Director General of The SDGCA said, “The SDGs signify the value of managing all aspects of systems and not just those that are productive but also have the potential to become so once sustainability needs are addressed. We look forward to our partnership with MLG, because its efforts on achieving successful land management encourage breaking with institutional traditions that have separated development, agriculture, forestry, environment, and land reform as separate domains. This is an opportunity to enable the ideal multifunctional conditions of governance, gender synergies, secured land tenure, investment, and economic markets. Together with MLG, we can demonstrate practical applications and ways of measuring the impact of SDGs.”
MLG has been cultivating its presence on the African continent by helping governments establish land management and administrative systems using 21st century technology, notably with gender equity as a priority. In Rwanda, MLG is implementing a land transaction system, Ubutaka, an efficient platform service which also assures protection of security of identity for citizens as well as facilitate cost-effective service delivery by the government. MLG has made many functions of digital governance not only paperless but also streamlined for access without compromising the most rigorous expectations for efficiency, equity, security and immutability. In the Republic of Zambia, MLG is providing systematic land titling, land administration and payment software to enable the issuance of 4 million Certificates of Titles (COTs) on state land over a period of seven years — the largest systematic land titling project ever embarked upon in the nation. MLG is the first external company to invest resources upfront for guaranteeing security of tenure by issuing titles to Zambians. This momentous effort follows on the success of the pilot project undertaken by MLG to collect data for 50,000 title eligible properties using their proprietary systematic land titling technology in Lusaka City, and 45% of those titles issued to women either as sole or joint property owners. In Liberia, MLG’s efforts are directed toward formally recognizing and recording the rights of Liberian landowners. The demographic breakdown of this data allows for MLG to evaluate the impact of and to improve upon sensitization efforts to reach underrepresented landowners, including women.
Since July 2016, The SDGCA has been working at frontline to assist African countries in realizing SDGs by organizing high level conferences in which policy makers, researchers, academics, business people and civil societies convene and discuss on how SDGS are to be achieved in Africa. The SDGCA has offered many specialized trainings to public institutions to facilitate in harmonizing efforts and tracking the progress of SDGs across the continent. To ensure that SDGs are tracked and reported, The SDGCA compiled and harmonized indicator data points for both UN SDG Agenda 2030 and African Union Agenda 2063 goals. It mapped data elements to ease concurrent data entry for both Agendas in The SDGCA Data Portal and Monitoring and Reporting System. In a bid to expand its work with African counties, The SDGCA has signed Host Country Agreements with the Republics of Rwanda, Zambia and Liberia; and more are planned to be signed in near future to establish sub regional offices.
MLG will be discussing SDG’s during the 2021 Conference on Land Policy in Africa, in addition to hosting a panel discussion on "How Innovative Technologies Can Contribute to Securing Tenure Rights in Africa?" as a part of the Africa Land Forum 2021.
About Medici Land Governance
Medici Land Governance leverages blockchain and other technologies (such as cryptography, AI and others) to support land governance, titling, and administration with a secure public record of land ownership. With land records stored on the blockchain, land ownership is standardized and can be recognized by local and global economies. Medici Land Governance supports agencies in the digitization of their current records, engendering trust and security in data by diminishing human error and accidental damage to records.
About The Sustainable Development Goals Center for Africa
The Sustainable Development Goals Center for Africa (The SDGCA) is an autonomous not-for-profit international organization that supports governments, civil society, businesses and academic institutions in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Africa. The SDGCA was established by African leaders to ensure they act together in pursuit of a shared African development vision and that Africa is well-positioned in the global forum with all other actors responsible for the global conversation and actions related to the SDGs.
