Speakers

• Banashree Banerjee
  

  Banashree Banerjee

  Banashree Banerjee has been associated with INHAF since its inception. She is an architect and urban planner who is a teacher, researcher and practitioner. Currently she works as an independent consultant, teaches at the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS), Rotterdam and provides professional support to a number of NGOs. In the past she has worked with Kerala Government, HUDCO and Delhi School of Planning and Architecture. Her professional work focuses on urban poverty and informality, affordable housing, inclusive and participatory planning and urban land management. Banashree has experience of working in several countries besides India, including Myanmar, Thailand, Bangladesh, Philippines, Korea and Egypt. Banashree has several publications to her credit.

• Eugene Chigbu
  

  Eugene Chigbu

  Uchendu Eugene CHIGBU is Associate Professor in Land Administration. His works fall within the interface between Social Sciences and Geodesy. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal Land Use Policy. He is a co-Chair of the Research Cluster of the Global Land Tool Network (UN-Habitat). He is also the Coordinator of the Network of Excellence on Land Governance in Africa (NELGA) in the Southern African Region. He has particular interest on applying land methods to societal development issues. His most recent book, “Land Governance and Gender: The Tenure–Gender Nexus in Land Management and Land Policy” was published in 2022.

• Geoffrey Payne Moderator
  

  Geoffrey Payne

  Moderator

  Geoffrey Payne is a housing and urban development consultant with five decades of experience covering all regions of the world. He has undertaken research, consultancy and capacity building assignments for the World Bank, UN-Habitat and other international development agencies, governments and academic institutions, published widely and contributed to numerous international conferences. His main focus is on reviewing and developing innovative approaches for providing secure land tenure and property rights, advising on urban planning, land management, housing policy and promoting multi-stakeholder partnerships to build local capacity. He lectures in several universities, has been an adviser to the Commonwealth Universities Association and British Council and is currently a member of the Royal Town Planning Institute International Committee. His latest book is ‘Somewhere to Live: Rising to the global urban land and housing challenge’ (2022) published by Practical Action Publishing, UK.

• Mark Napier
  

  Mark Napier

  Mark Napier is Principal Researcher at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in South Africa, and Visiting Professor in the Centre for Development Support at the University of the Free State. Mark graduated as an architect from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and studied housing and development at postgraduate levels at Newcastle University, UK. Mark led the UK Aid-funded Urban Land Markets Programme from 2006 to 2013 and is currently project leader for the Urban Knowledge Exchange Southern Africa initiative (www.uKESA.info). Mark has worked, lectured and published in the areas of land and housing markets, home-based enterprises, and incremental housing processes and housing adjustment.

• Oumar Sylla
  

  Oumar Sylla

  Since January 2020 Oumar Sylla has been acting as Director for the Regional Office for Africa in the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN Habitat). Before this, he was Branch Coordinator, Urban Legislation, Land and Governance in UN Habitat and, from September 2015, Head of UN Habitat’s Land and GLTN Unit. Prior to joining the Land and GLTN Unit, Oumar served as a Senior Advisor in UN Habitat’s Regional Office for Africa and focal point to support urban policies development and sustainable urbanization in francophone countries. From 2009 to 2014, he was Chief Technical Advisor for UN Habitat’s Land Programme in DR Congo and he also has experience with the European Union framework, which he gained as a Land Policy Advisor in South Sudan and Burkina Faso (2006-2008). From 1999 to 2005 he was a Research Fellow in the Laboratory of Legal Anthropology in Paris 1 Sorbonne, mainly working on land and decentralization policies in West Africa. In Senegal, he operated as a junior researcher within the ILRI/ ISRA institutional cooperation framework (1998-1999) dealing with land and natural resources.

• Rob Home
  

  Rob Home

  Robert Home is Emeritus Professor of Land Management at Anglia Ruskin University (UK) and a chartered town planner. He has undertaken research and consultancy in all regions of Africa. Among his books are 2020 (ed.) Land Issues for Urban Governance in Sub-Saharan Africa (edited, 2021, Springer); Of planting and planning: The making of British colonial cities (2013, Routledge); Essays in African Land Law and Case Studies in African Land Law (2013, Pretoria University Law Press) and (with H.Lim) Demystifying The Mystery of Capital: Land Titling in Africa and the Caribbean, (2004,Glasshouse Press).

• Rohit Lahoti
  

  Rohit Lahoti

  Rohit Lahoti is presently working as a Consultant at EY (Mumbai) for the Government of Maharashtra/ Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai.

• Shantanu Raut
  

  Shantanu Raut

  Shantanu Raut is finishing his master’s degree in International cooperation in urban development from the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany. In 2021 he completed his internship with Geoffrey Payne and associate and UN-Habitat. During which he worked on the research of Geoffrey Payne’s recently published book Somewhere to Live: Rising to the Global Urban Land and Housing Challenge and Smart city governance report, Mina and Suleja’s master planning proposal, respectively. He has been a research assistant in the Architecture department at the Technical University of Darmstadt since July 2022. In addition, he has occasionally collaborated with Geoffrey Payne and Associates on various short-term research projects since 2021. Furthermore, he has been working as an Architect since 2017 on a wide range of architectural design projects based in India.