|
Abera Waqayoo, 28, took off his hat out of respect
for the Oromia Regional State official that handed
him a certificate to the one hectare of land he has
cultivated his whole life. He smiled faintly as he
slipped the paper into his jacket pocket and,
looking rather embarrassed, slipped back into the
group with his fellow farmers.
Abera is one of around 15 farmers in the Dendi
Woreda, Gare Arera Kebele of the West Shewa zone who
received their land certificates on December 5, 2007
in the presence of several reporters and more than
forty African, Asian and other delegated experts
brought to the remote area by GTZ, Germany's
overseas development agency.
He and his neighbours are receiving an unusual
amount of attention amid a debate over land tenure
and land ownership in Ethiopia, with some saying
that the paper he now holds does not provide him
enough control over his land. Abera, at least, feels
more reassured.
"I am very happy now because I am feeling more
secure than ever before," he told Fortune.
Abera's certificate is one of thousands being
granted by the Land Registration and Distribution of
Land Certificate Programme, which was started some
six years ago by the Ministry of Agriculture and
Rural Development (MoARD) with the financial and
technical support from the World Bank and US Agency
for International Development. The programme is in
line with the passage of Land Law Proclamation No.
133/2006, which obliges a land user to have a land
holding certificate, and operates in four regions:
Amhara, Oromia, Tigray and Southern Nations,
Nationalities and Peoples regions.
With the programme, Ethiopia is following in the
footsteps of other countries that have embarked on
massive land tenure programmes, largely motivated by
the urgings of the World Bank and donor agencies
like GTZ. In Africa, Benin, Madagascar and
Mauritania, for example, have already completed
their pilot programme and are heading for the wider
implementation phase.
Land is a key asset for many people throughout the
world, especially for those who live in the
developing world. In Ethiopia, land is accessed
mainly through state-mandated peasant associations
called "tabias," which are informal and inefficient,
though the main problem for the country remains
shortage of land to sustain the large rural
population. Worst of all, persistent land
degradation, caused by an interrelated mix of
man-made and natural events, is gradually taking its
toll on the poorest of the poor, thereby reducing
the land's economic value.
The programme presumes that land management will be
improved once owners or holders of the land have
greater security on their property.
According to the data obtained from the MoARD,
insecurity of land tenure seriously hinders
communities and people from realizing economic and
non-economic benefits such as sustainable management
of resources, greater investment, incentives,
transferability of land, improved credit and market
access as well as independence from discretionary
interference by bureaucrats.
MoARD's emphasis on land tenure may represent a new
shift in Ethiopia's land tenure policy.
Previous to the land reform of 1975, which vested
land rights to the state, the land tenure system in
the country had variations in different regions.
While in the southern part landlords were holding a
huge tract of land with full ownership rights,
customary land rights in the form of rist
were dominant in the central and northern parts.
Be this as it may, the concomitant misery and
oppression of the Ethiopian people in general and
the farmers in particular ignited the widely
acclaimed "land to the tiller" slogan that resulted
in the 1975 land reform which allowed land to be
possessed by individuals as a private property.
After the fall of the Derg regime, however, the 1995
FDRE constitution put land under the ownership of
the state, but allowed the right to use land
indefinitely.
However, land insecurity is now considered a serious
problem in Ethiopia. According to a study conducted
three years ago, an average household believes that
it will be able to operate its land holding in the
future with only 54% probability (or a 46%
probability of losing once holding). That's why the
government is embarking on a massive land
registration and certification programme.
The insecurity problem is not the only driving force
for the programme, though.
"We are hoping that this registration and
certification programme will also greatly avoid land
conflicts and will serve as a guarantee for the
disposal of rights in a land," said Ato Kassaye
Tilahun, coordinator of the Dendi Woreda's lands
registration and certification programme.
The FDRE Constitution in Article 40 states that
''the right to ownership of rural and urban land… is
exclusively vested in the state and in the people of
Ethiopia.'' In addition, the Federal Rural Land
Administration Proclamation No. 456/2005, in
addition to bestowing all the regions of the country
to issue their land law, provides that rural lands
can be inherited and leased out (rented out) up to
half of the holdings for a limited lease period,
thereby ruling out the sale and mortgaging of land
in the nation as a whole.
Desalegne Rahmato, manager of the Forum for Social
Studies (FSS) and Ethiopia's leading expert on land
policy, argues that the present land tenure system
is a hindrance to poverty alleviation and
development.
"The policy discourages farmers from engaging
themselves in other businesses by selling land in
their possession. To improve the declining
agricultural production, per capita income and food
availability, land must be privatized," he argues.
As a result of current land laws, farmers are often
denied bank loans because of a lack of assets for
collateral. A lack of credit in turn may mean
farmers are unable to purchase fertilizer or
agricultural equipment to improve the yield on their
land.
Dr. Andrea Bahm, who spoke on behalf of the German
development cooperation, seems to have noticed the
impact of the land policy in a wider sense. "I very
much hope that the reform process in land
administration in Ethiopia will adequately address
the issues surrounding common property resources by
giving them the attention they deserve in policy and
legal provisions", she declared to participants of
the workshop organized by the MoARD, GTZ and USAID
on December 3, 2007.
By comparison, countries like Thailand, Georgia,
Lithuania and Malaysia, have developed a highly
sophisticated registry system of land, contributing
to the creation of transparent land markets and
vibrant mortgaging banking, among other things.
"In my country farmers can get loans from Banks by
mortgaging their land", Mr. Sar Savan, the Cambodian
Land Administration project director, told Fortune.
Still, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has told
parliament time and again that the land laws shall
not be up for debate. One of the justifications
given against privatization of land is the fear that
farmers may sell their land and migrate to urban
centres, resulting in adverse social and economic
consequences. However, some studies indicate that if
farmers are allowed to sell land, only around 8.6pc
would.
The programme has thus avoided the underlying issue
of land privatization, expressly stating that the
whole process should not interfere with the local
area's law and should reflect the variation of
ownership according to statutory law, communal law
and customary traditions. Instead, the programme has
focussed on building capacity for registering and
certifying land at two levels.
The first level is conducted by using a rope for
measurement while the second method, introduced in
the year 2006, is conducted by using a Graphical
Positioning System (GPS).
However, some experts contend that the second-level
land surveying system, which is expensive and
time-consuming, need not be applied to low valued
rural lands with little potential of development.
Rather, they should be reserved for high-value land
in areas such as urban areas, commercial
agriculture, irrigation development and
resettlement.
In the Oromia region, for example, 849,845
households have received the first-level
certificate. But the region is conducting the second
method, which is financially supported by USAID, in
only six selected districts and so far 147,571
parcels of land have been surveyed. According to the
MoARD, preliminary impact assessments reveal a
significant enhancement in participation of land
rental markets and increase in production efforts as
a result of the land registration and certification
carried out in a highly cost-effective manner. The
registration system, in addition, may eventually
have a system to update land recording variations
that might be caused by transactions and
successions.
For farmers like Abera, however, it seems that they
should have to wait for some time till they could
mortgage their land using the certificates that they
have recently received.
"I hope the local authorities will arrange us some
kind of loan so that we could extensively use our
land in addition to enjoying the other benefits that
the certificate recently brought to us," Abera
said.
|
