English transcript:
Thank you I am the Honourable Nzanzu Kasivita Provincial Minster in Charge of Land Affairs urbanisation and housing in North Kivu in the DR Congo. North Kivu is a provincial partner with UN-Habitat and GLTN.
We have tried to develop land tools together with partners, that is why we are here in Nairobi to participate in this big conference, in order to evaluate what we have accomplished.
We have experimented with the capacity development tool, which GLTN developed in the province of North Kivu with the participation of the Christian Bilingual University of Congo with whom GLTN is in partnership with.
We effectively digitalised tenure information in Masiani, Béni in order to develop digitalised cadastral maps for the future.
Moreover, in Goma through the training program with GLTN and its partners, we have also started to develop cadastral digitalisation, with other neighbourhoods who are getting involved in digitalisation of land.
We are as well registering all the information for our land administration in Goma. These partnerships let us not only to develop a good database regarding land administration. It also allows us to develop these databases with other government services such as the public finance services.
Because the constitution of the DR Congo gives us the possibility to collect taxes on land, the database helps us link that information with the tax department.
As a result, this restores the influence of the state. I, as the Minster in Charge of Land Affairs we also encourage partnerships with UN habitat for rural land in Ruchuru and in Masisi
We would like this partnership to continue beyond the pilot initiatives in Béni and Masiani or the cadastral digitalisation in Goma.
We hope this partnership can continue not only for the province of North Kivu but for the whole of the DRC, by ensuring that the land administrators develop a solid database on land tenure, can reduce issues of conflict and have the capacity to build good planification of land.
We are confident that these partnerships will help Congo and the province of North Kivu to meet the challenges of land governance which is an important aspect for land reform in the DRC.
To summarise my speech, I would like to say that we would like that our partnership with GLTN will go beyond the pilot initiatives.
We would like to collaborate within other regions beyond Béni and Goma.
Regarding the overall country, we hope that these pilot initiatives in North Kivu can be duplicated at the national level so that we can effectively ensure that these partnerships will establish good governance and land planification for the future.