When Colombia held Chocoshow, its first national cacao trade show, at the end of 2018, growers readied their finest cacaos to compete for recognition and fame on the nation’s stage. A victory for any lot of high-grade cacao would be a welcome boost to a sector constantly struggling with price fluctuations.
Meta-based cacao growers’ association Asopcari was prepared. After two years of fundamental changes in how its producers harvest and process cacao, the association came to Chocoshow with high hopes. In the end, it walked away with one gold and one silver medal, a triumphant showing for a group of 90-plus growers scattered about the Ariari river valley.
The growers have not always been great at production, Lopez admits, but it is not for lack of trying. The history of cacao in Meta is one of success and tragedy. By the mid-eighties, cacao was a cash crop for thousands of farmers, and annual production peaked at 5,000 tons. By 2000, illicit crops had essentially gutted Meta’s cacao future, destroying more than 7.5 million trees and leaving families in a far more vulnerable state.
In 2000, Asopcari was created and started with 300 hectares of quality cacao clones. In 2004, Meta cacaoteros produced a meager 400 tons of cacao. For Asopcari and others, it was going to be an uphill battle. Since then, the efforts to recuperate cacao cultivation in Meta have been slow. For more than a decade, much of Meta was off limits due to conflict, the drug trade, and an overwhelming distrust of anyone and everyone, making it especially difficult to establish sustainable marketing channels.
To make matters worse, the government delivered little necessary technical assistance to improve growing and harvesting techniques. Farmers soon lost track of which trees were improved varieties and bundled all cacao together, regardless of origin or type.
In 2008, the government created the company Almidones de Sucre in order to stimulate rural development in the Montes de María region and to provide added value to the cassava value chain. For several years, the company worked to build a business culture with cassava growers and increase production. In 2017, with the arrival of USAID support, Almidones benefited from the consolidation of a public-private partnership, which generated the synergy needed in the sector. The commercial manager of Almidones de Sucre, Alejandro Zuluaga, talks about this partnership and the evolution of the industrial cassava sector in Colombia.
By Deborah Espinosa and Patrick Gallagher, USAID’s Land Technology Solutions Program
Persistent and pervasive gender inequality is a global development challenge that constrains economic growth, educational opportunities, and health outcomes. It jeopardizes food security and undermines poverty reduction strategies. The world over, some formal and many informal laws and customs operate to hinder women’s empowerment and thus their full potential as agents of economic and social change.
A woman holding her land certificate in rural Zambia. Photo: Jeremy Green/USAID.
Arguably, in no sector are gender disparities so prevalent and disempowering to women as in the land and property rights sector. For women, documented land rights can confer direct economic benefits and lead to greater autonomy, increased bargaining power within their communities and households, and enhanced resilience. Worldwide evidence suggests that when women enjoy secure rights to land, their control over household income increases.[1]
In much of the world, however, the ownership and control of land is a source of power, prestige, and profit. Not surprisingly then, women’s ownership and control over land is almost always constrained by entrenched traditions and practices that limit women’s participation in public life, even if formal laws recognizing women’s land rights are in place.
Importantly, USAID’s new and innovative tool for documenting land rights has proved impactful in reversing these trends. USAID’s Mobile Application to Secure Tenure (MAST) has worked to reduce gender equality and promote women’s empowerment in communities where it has been implemented. MAST is a suite of easy-to-use tools and methods that help communities efficiently, transparently and affordably map and document their land and resource rights. MAST combines a mobile application with a robust data management platform to capture and manage land information, including names and photographs of people using and occupying land, details about land used, and information regarding an occupant’s claim to the land.
Working with local governments, customary leaders, and civil society organizations, USAID is leveraging MAST to recognize and record both women and men’s rights to rural land, with positive women’s empowerment outcomes in Tanzania and Zambia.
In Tanzania, for example, although Tanzanian women comprise 50 percent of the population and provide 80 percent of total agricultural labor (a sector which employs 77 percent of Tanzanians), country data indicates that only 27 percent of women are landowners.[2] The country ranks 119th (out of 189) on the UNDP’s 2013 Gender Inequality Index. In 2018, Tanzania’s ranking has even fallen since its 2013 ranking of 130th. [3][4]A key reason cited for Tanzania’s drop in the rankings is the persistence of gender inequalities in access to and control over land and other financial resources, and the additional burden that poverty places on Tanzanian women.[5] Another gender disparity in Tanzania is the low proportion of women in decision-making positions at regional and local government levels.[6]
Figure 1. Gender of MAST beneficiaries by location. In Iringa, Tanzania and Zambia, approximately 45% of MAST beneficiaries are female.
And yet, four years into USAID’s MAST-based Land Tenure Assistance (LTA) Program, almost 45 percent of project beneficiaries receiving land certificates are women (see Figure 1). Similarly, under USAID’s Tenure and Global Climate Change program in Zambia, two civil society organizations, Chipata District Land Alliance (CPLA) and Petauke District Land Alliance (PDLA), used MAST to also register about 45 percent of customary land in the names of women in a country with similar traditional constraints on women.
In both of these countries, MAST’s approach has been critical in promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment in the land sector. MAST includes on-the-ground trainings, using inclusive and participatory approaches to build capacity of communities to document, manage information about, and understand their land and resource rights. The MAST approach operates transparently, encourages full participation of community members, and increases the understanding of land rights of all beneficiaries, particularly women’s rights.
To hear directly from Zambian women on their experiences obtaining land certificates, see the USAID video, In My Own Name, Empowering Women Through Secure Land Rights.
What Does the Data Say?
Figure 2. Gender of MAST-assisted landowners by their occupancy type and location. Percentages are calculated within each site, and Tanzania data is representative of Iringa region only. Though men dominate the single occupant/landholder types, women are equally represented in the co-occupancy/joint types.
A gender analysis of data on individual versus collective landholdings provides further insight useful for future programming. In both Tanzania, and Zambia, more men hold land individually, while more women hold land jointly or in co-tenancy arrangements. This finding is backed by research indicating that female ownership of land is generally held together with husbands, whereas men are more likely to be sole owners of land.[7]
Despite that, men currently represent a higher proportion of individual landowners, the implementation of MAST has proven effective in promoting gender equality and empowering women by providing a technology coupled with an inclusive approach for recognizing and documenting land rights. In Zambia, land documentation had positive impact on household perceptions of improved tenure security,[8] and in Tanzania, there was an11% increase in respondents who felt that disputes over land will improve in the next year.[9]
Under USAID’s Tenure and Global Climate Change program, about 45% of all customary land certificates have been issued to women using Mobile Applications for Secure Tenure (MAST). Photo: USAID.
To learn more about MAST, visit USAID’s MAST Learning Platform at:
[1] Meinzin-Dick, et al. 2017. “Women’s Land Rights As A Pathway to Poverty Reduction: Framework and Review of Available Evidence, in Agricultural Systems, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308521X1730505X. [2] FAO. 2014. Gender Inequalities in Rural Employment in Tanzania Mainland An Overview. [3] UNDP. 2018. Human Development Report. [4] UNDP. 2018. Human Development Report. [5] UNDP. 2018. Tanzanian Human Development Report 2017: Social Policy in the Context of Economic Transformation. Tanzanian women spend 13.6 percent of their time per day on unpaid care work compared to 3.6 percent for their male counterparts. Id. As a consequence, women’s availability for income-generating activities is reduced, to the detriment of themselves and the household and local economies. [6] Id. [7] Land Alliance and ODI. (2017). “Prindex Analytical Report.” [8] USAID. 2018. USAIDTenure and Global Climate ChangeEvaluation Report. [9] USAID. 2017. Baseline Report: Impact Evaluation of the Feed the Future Tanzania Land Tenure Assistance Activity.
By Deborah Espinosa and Patrick Gallagher, USAID’s Land Technology Solutions Program
There is much debate about the extent to which our prolific use of mobile technology affects our lives. While the broader debate rages on, the results on how smartphones can lead to improved development outcomes is becoming clearer. For example, a recent study in Ghana found that smallholder farmers’ mobile phone ownership and use significantly improves agricultural productivity when also combined with provision of extension services, and enhanced market participation.[1]
Land tenure and property rights is another emerging area where mobile technology can enhance development in powerful ways. USAID’s Mobile Applications for Secure Tenure (MAST) initiative is empowering rural communities to define, map, record, and document their land and resources. MAST combines participatory approaches and mobile technology platforms with on-the-ground training to engage communities to map and document land and resource rights through efficient, transparent, and accurate processes. Significantly, these communities are applying this technology more efficiently than more traditional methods and at scale.
The MAST approach is comprised of easy-to-use mobile phone and tablet applications, combined with a robust data management platform, which captures and manages land information that can include names and photos of the people using and occupying land, details about what the land is used for, and information regarding occupants’ claims to land. In addition, on-the ground training of community members builds their capacity to document and manage information about land and resource rights, while participatory approaches ensure that communities understand those rights.
In Burkina Faso, the MAST approach proved to be roughly nine times faster than traditional methods. With MAST tools in hand, and in partnership with the community members, the country’s Rural Land Service required only four months to complete the process of mapping 2,638 parcels in four villages, with verifications averaging 30 minutes each. In comparison, using traditional methods, the same authorities mapped only 3,706 parcels over a four-year period.[2]
By working in tandem with community members—especially youth—MAST enables citizens to map and document their own land and resources in less time, while promoting community autonomy in land tenure processes. For instance, MAST has been implemented on a variety of time scales; the technology can be deployed to map an area intensely for a short time, or more gradually over longer periods of time. Paired with community ownership, this means that the technology is flexible enough to meet the needs of the community.
Chieftainess Mkanda distributes land certificates documented through MAST in Zambia’s Eastern Province. Photo: USAID Tenure and Global Climate Change Program.
Efficiencies in mapping are also evident through entire certification processes in Burkina Faso, Tanzania, and Zambia, demonstrating that MAST is a scalable tool. As MAST implementations scale up, the duration between demarcation and certification shortens. MAST allows the certification process to become more efficient as time passes. In contrast, traditional processes generally do not become more efficient over time because of their reliance on older technologies, significant labor, and time-intensive manual processes.
Thus, despite MAST having higher upfront costs related to adapting or customizing the technology suite to specific land tenure context, its significant efficiency gains over time have allowed implementers to leverage mobile tools and citizen-centric approaches for replication and scaling regardless of the context. Ultimately, the MAST approach is not only a rapid and scalable tool, it also becomes more efficient over time as users become familiar with the technology. And this means that land documents get in the hands of the landholders even sooner.
To learn more about MAST, visit USAID’s MAST Learning Platform at:
[1] Haruna Issahaku, Benjamin Musah Abu & Paul Kwame Nkegbe (2018) “Does the Use of Mobile Phones by Smallholder Maize Farmers Affect Productivity in Ghana?”, Journal of African Business, 19:3, 302-322. [2] A Mobile Application to Secure Land Tenure, Michael Graglia and Christopher Mellon, Aug. 3, 2017 (https://www.newamerica.org/future-property-rights/blog/mobile-application-secure-land-tenure/); Issifou Ganou, Medard Some, Raymond Soumbougma, and Anne Girardin, Using Mobile Phones, GPS, and the Cloud to Deliver Faster, Cheaper, and More Transparent Land Titles: The Case of Burkina Faso. Paper prepared for presentation at the “2017 WORLD BANK CONFERENCE ON LAND AND POVERTY,” The World Bank – Washington DC, March 20-24, 2017.
Sometimes, social change comes from the most unexpected places. In Tolima, it is coming from the cacao plant. Thanks to a public-private partnership facilitated by USAID, the women from 120 families are walking down the road of equality and are empowered to use their voices. They have realized that expressing their opinions is important, and that their ideas strengthen their families and community.
What began as a training in land preparation, seeding, irrigation systems, and business management gradually became a scenario in which women learned to express themselves and seek to fill leadership roles in spaces traditionally reserved for men.
Yolanda Tapiero, a member of the farmers’ association Asoacas in the municipality of Ortega, never used to participate or speak up in association meetings. She says she was shy and embarrassed to address male colleagues in this professional setting, far from her house.
“The partnership integrated us and taught us to ask ourselves how we worked together. So we abandoned our fear of talking to others. We saw that nothing bad would happen if we expressed ourselves and spoke up. Now, in my association, I request the floor and I propose what I see and what could be useful to the association. We have a lot to say, but it’s because we don’t express ourselves that many things get loss,” Yolanda Tapiero, member of Asoacas, Ortega, Tolima.
This blog post was originally published on the DAI website.
After Monika Lalika’s husband passed away, her in-laws did not allow her to use the land he had left her and she used to worry that they would one day claim the property for themselves. For Martha Paulo Mwilongo, a land dispute with her neighbor kept her from selling or renting part of her 11 acres to pay her children’s school fees. Joti Kihongo wanted to expand his general store, but could not get a large enough loan because banks would not recognize his undocumented land as collateral.
This lack of official land documentation is not unusual in rural Tanzania, since property in most villages is handed down from generation to generation, typically through male family members. However, for Monika, Martha, and Joti, and thousands of Tanzanians like them, this historically informal system of land ownership had become an impediment to their ambitions.
All that started to change after the Feed the Future Tanzania Land Tenure Assistance (LTA) project began holding meetings in their villages. The U.S. Agency for International Development project works with 41 communities in central Tanzania to register land and issue Certificates of Customary Right of Occupancy to individual landholders, with a focus on increasing women’s inclusion in property ownership. LTA has worked with villages to demarcate and digitally map and record almost 63,000 parcels. These previously undocumented parcels are now registered in the country’s official land registry system, providing secure property tenure to 21,000 Tanzanians. Read the full story
This blog post was originally published on Chemonics Impact Stories.
At age 16, Salomat Chorieva started her first job on a farm in Tajikistan. She endured harsh working conditions, growing cotton and wheat on 700 square meters of farmland. She handed over all her harvests to the head of the farm, who undercompensated her for her labor. Working within a land system dating back to Soviet times further complicated her situation: farmers had little control over their land and little knowledge of their rights. Ms. Chorieva seemingly had little upward mobility and no end goal in sight.
At its inception, Ms. Chorieva’s story was not unusual. Agriculture in Tajikistan accounts for approximately 64 percent of employment, and dehkan farms — post-Soviet individual and family farms in Central Asia — are commonly staffed by women, who typically occupy lower-level positions in the agricultural hierarchy. Yet by age 25, Ms. Chorieva broke the mold — she became the first woman in Khatlon province’s Dusti district to head a dehkan farm. She now runs a 27,500 square-meter plot, and her farm boasts harvests of corn, cucumbers, cotton, green beans, and carrots. With her business, she supports her family of six and makes a decent profit. Owning the farm gives her a sense of freedom.
“I have my own money; I can pay my expenses and taxes and divide the profits among family members who work with me,” she explains.
How did Ms. Chorieva achieve this entrepreneurial feat by age 25? While her resilience, motivation, and agency were certainly crucial ingredients to her success, she was not working alone. Her success was facilitated by Aysifat Norbekova, a tashabbuskor (land rights activist), who works with USAID’s Feed the Future Tajikistan Land Market Development Activity (LMDA) to empower local farmers and guide them through the land registration process. Read the full story
When Meta-based plantain growers’ association Asoplagran made its second shipment of plantain to Grupo Éxito, the Colombian multinational firm returned 30 kilograms of fruit that did not meet its standards. Edilson Aguilar and his colleagues were overjoyed, since they had originally delivered more than three tons.
“Grupo Éxito’s inspectors gave us good feedback and were quite impressed with our plantains,” explains Aguilar. “We are building our relationship with Grupo Éxito. The negotiation is straightforward, and they are not the same type of tyrant you see with traders in the local market.”
Thanks to the PPP, Asoplagran and three additional growers’ associations sat face-to-face with Colombian buyers—including Grupo Éxito and Cencosud—Colombia’s largest food retailers. The business conference, set up by thanks to the Meta Chamber of Commerce, is an example of USAID’s power to convene market players and broker new relationships.
USAID helped create the plantain PPP in early 2018 to leverage government support, gain interest from the private sector, and give producers the chance to continue improving their skills and knowledge. The partnership is valued at approximately US$400,000 (COP1,180 million), includes investments from four municipal governments, and benefits 130 growers from four plantain growers’ associations, such as Asoplagran.
Last month, top Colombian economic minds gathered in Bogotá for aGrand Economic Forum on attracting investment as the country emerges from a decades-long civil war. Andres Cadena, a senior partner at McKinsey & Company, distilled the issue to its essence: “Colombia’s great challenge is that it has not found its growth model. The country has been growing with an economic model that generates growth, but not well-being. It is not an inclusive model.”
With no shortage of development dollars flowing to Colombia, how can that investment translate into an inclusive model of private sector-led economic growth? And how can the model become self-reliant over time? Read the full story
Every year, municipal leaders across Colombia face a recurring dilemma: use funds to fix the roads destroyed by the rains or spend the funds on a tertiary road inventory. On the one hand, the inventory is an instrument that every municipality needs in order to get tertiary roads into the nation’s official road network and to access funding. On the other, unmaintained tertiary roads are the first to succumb to Colombia’s violent rains and washouts.
USAID provides municipalities in Tolima with expert consulting, planning tools, and sustainable methodologies to tackle the lack of operational tertiary roads.
Seven out of ten kilometers of road in Colombia are tertiary roads. They are unpaved, ungraded, and usually lack drains, culverts, and retaining walls. For a tropical country dissected by three mountain ranges, the state of a region’s rural roads affects everything from access to education and health to economic development and citizen security. Of Colombia’s 1,120 municipalities, only 32 have completed tertiary road inventories.
Tertiary Roads
The municipality of Planadas, located in southern Tolima, has long been disconnected from the rest of Colombia. It is known as the birthplace of the FARC rebel army and famous for coffee. Until recently, buses took more than 14 hours to traverse the windy dirt road between the regional capital Ibague and Planadas. The municipality currently has more than 390 kilometers of tertiary roads, but according to Colombia’s road authority, INVIAS, there are no more than 26 kilometers.
In 2018, Planadas has COP 800 million to spend on roads. But that can be quickly reduced to nothing when clearing and repairing a rainy-season landslide can cost COP 400 million.
“Just one rainy season can use up the entire annual budget,” explains Niyerith Gonzalez, Planadas city councilwoman.
Gonzalez remembers the last time Planadas hired a contractor to fix a road caught in a landslide. The contractor came from another region of Colombia. Workers got lost, and the contractor brought machinery unable to negotiate the narrow, steep roads. That contract, according to Gonzalez, ended up being a bigger problem than the damaged road.
Meta-based cacao growers’ association Asopcari was prepared. After two years of fundamental changes in how its producers harvest and process cacao, the association came to Chocoshow with high hopes. In the end, it walked away with one gold and one silver medal, a triumphant showing for a group of 90-plus growers scattered about the Ariari river valley.
In 2008, the government created the company Almidones de Sucre in order to stimulate rural development in the Montes de María region and to provide added value to the cassava value chain. For several years, the company worked to build a business culture with cassava growers and increase production. In 2017, with the arrival of USAID support, Almidones benefited from the consolidation of a public-private partnership, which generated the synergy needed in the sector. The commercial manager of Almidones de Sucre, Alejandro Zuluaga, talks about this partnership and the evolution of the industrial cassava sector in Colombia.
first woman in Khatlon province’s Dusti district to head a 
its standards. Edilson Aguilar and his colleagues were overjoyed, since they had originally delivered more than three tons.
