Rural Land Certification in Ethiopia: Process, Initial Impact, and Implications for Other African Countries

By K. Deininger, D. Ali, Stein T. Holden, Jaap Zevenbergen. 2007

506 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Although many African countries have recently adopted highly innovative and pro-poor land laws, lack of implementation thwarts their potentially far-reaching impact on productivity, poverty reduction, and governance. The authors use a representative household survey from Ethiopia where, over a short period, certificates to more than 20 million plots were issued to describe the certification process, explore its incidence and preliminary impact, and quantify the costs. While this provides many suggestions to ensure sustainability and enhance impact, Ethiopia's highly cost-effective first-time registration process provides important lessons.

Subfields: General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c1338fc56e6a71540bbcb43599514a6d1df06a72

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In General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

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Citations in the corpus

The impact of land property rights interventions on investment and agricultural productivity in developing countries: a systematic review (2017, background): “−0.300 −0.133 0.033 Ethiopia 2003−2007 (Deininger et al., 2007) Rwanda 2007−2010 (Ali et al., 2011) 0 Figure 8.”
Tenure Insecurity, Gender, Low-cost Land Certification and Land Rental Market Participation in Ethiopia (2011, unknown): “Several case studies, from Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi and Uganda, revealed that land rental markets are good for poverty reduction because they enhance access to land for the poor; however, there are significant transaction costs undermining the potential of these markets.”
Frontiers of Commodification: State Lands and Their Formalization (2015, background): “A 1997 decentralization law devolved responsibility for land-related policymaking to these regional units (Deininger et al. 2008).”
Gender inequalities in ownership and control of land in Africa: Myths versus reality: (2015, background): “…University of Life Sciences 1 Involved in decisions on use of income from crop production 32 .5 before land reform 32.7 after land reform NR NA NA Deininger et al. (2007)b Ethiopia (2006) 2,300 households Nationwide household survey, stratified by agroecological zone and region, across 115…”
Impacts of land certification on tenure security, investment, and land markets: evidence from Ethiopia (2008, background): “For Ethiopia, the evidence of clear benefits implies that completion of certification will be warranted, ideally based on review and possible adjustment with regard to institutional structure (EPLAUA vs. MOARD), specific rules for implementation (communal areas, women’s participation, spatial record”
Agriculture and food security in selected countries in Sub-Saharan Africa: diversity in trends and opportunities (2011, background): “Many important lessons were learned from this successful programme (Denning et al. 2009). However this intensification came at a substantial cost, since the government heavily subsidized N-fertilizer and improved maize seed. Snapp et al. (2010) show that much more attention should be paid to ecosyst”
Gendered impacts of the 2007–2008 food price crisis: Evidence using panel data from rural Ethiopia (2013, background): “Deininger et al. (2008) found that land registration increased the likelihood that households would undertake long-term investments in land (terracing and bunding) over the previous 12 months. There were no significant differences between male- and femaleheaded households in the probability of under”
Environmental and Gender Impacts of Land Tenure Regularization in Africa: Pilot Evidence from Rwanda (2011, background): “Third, low-cost and participatory mechanisms for land adjudication have been shown to be viable (Deininger et al. 2008) and to lead to equitable outcomes that allow clear productivity gains over time (Deininger et al.”
Legal Knowledge and Economic Development: The Case of Land Rights in Uganda (2006, unknown): “to pay is possible (Deininger et al. 2008).”
Gender and Sustainability (2014, background): “(113) find that community-based land registration in Ethiopia led to more households undertaking new landrelated investments, specifically tree planting and using SCTs, but this also examined householdlevel responses and did not distinguish between male- and female-managed plots.”