The Eight African Development Forum, dubbed ADF-VIII, will take place on the 23-25 October in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The forum is a flagship event, established in 1999 by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), is a multi-stakeholder forum for debating, discussing and initiating concrete strategies for Africa’s development. It is convened in collaboration with the African Union Commission and the African Development Bank and other key partners to establish an African–driven development agenda that reflects consensus and leads to specific programmes for implementation.

The forum brings together a large number of participants including Heads of State and Government, African member States, development partners, other United Nations agencies, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, academia, development practitioners, civil society organizations, the private sector, eminent policy and opinion leaders and other relevant stakeholders.

I visited Burkina in 2008 in support of the formulation phase of the "Framework and Guidelines on Land Policy in Africa."

I am back, this time in support of an initiative to help develop an implementation strategy for this continental land policy process. My host is the Economic Community of West Africa States.

This is an initiative of the African Union Commission in partnership with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (Uneca) and the African Development Bank (AfDB) to develop a land policy framework to strengthen land rights, enhance productivity and secure livelihoods in Africa. It commenced in March 2006 in Addis Ababa.

In December 2008, there was talk of Kenya leasing 100, 000 acres of land on the Tana River Delta to Qatar. Debate on this escalated in 2009, with local activists lobbying hard against this prospect. In early 2009, this debate was spiced by speculation that chunks of land around Jomo Kenyatta International Airport would be leased to Qatari investors for the construction of an expansive five star hotel. Debates on the two remain inconclusive, with the Lands Ministry unable to authoritatively verify any.

It was time to conclude the African land policy process. A final experts’ meeting was scheduled at Addis. This time round, Professor Okoth Ogendo, fellow countryman and “the guru” to the process, had had to travel ahead to sort out programme logistics, being chair to the Task Force.

I later joined him at the hotel in Addis where the programme kicked off as scheduled.