Lusaka — The Economic Commission for Africa Office for Southern Africa (ECA-SA) is organizing an Ad Hoc Experts Group Meeting (AEGM) on the theme "Land, Identity and Socio-Economic Transformation in Southern Africa" from 28th to 29th November 2018, in Livingstone, Zambia.

The meeting will interrogate the effects of land access, reform, ownership, and markets on improved agricultural productivity and in stimulating regional socio-economic transformation. The AEGM will review how issues of identity impact on land access, ownership, control and governance and the implications of this for rapid agricultural development and sustainable and inclusive socio-economic transformation in the region. The AEGM will be informed by the findings of a draft report on Land, Identity and Socio-Economic Transformation in Southern Africacommissioned by SRO-SA as well as by other expert interventions at the meeting.

The meeting will bring together high level participants from a broad spectrum of stakeholders including experts and academics working on land related issues, private sector, civil society organisations, member States (especially Ministries responsible for land and agriculture), SADC and COMESA Secretariats, the African Union, the African Development Bank, World Bank, the United Nations agencies (FAO, UNIDO, UNDP, etc).

At the same venue, a First Consultative Meeting of the Bureau of the 24th Intergovernmental Committee of Experts (ICE) of Southern Africa will be convened on 30th November, 2018 to discuss the work of ECA in Southern Africa and the role of the Bureau in providing guidance and support in the delivery of programmes and outputs of the office especially in the remaining part of the biennium (2018-2019), review the ICE 2018 meeting and its key recommendations and possible follow-ups and discuss the preparations for the 2019 ICE meeting in the Kingdom of Eswatini.