The United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Land Administration to Nurture Development (LAND) project in Ethiopia is a new five-year intervention designed to build upon the success of its two previous land tenure and property rights (LTPR) interventions. Project activities will be implemented with and through the Ministry of Agriculture’s Land Administration and Use Department (LAUD/MoA) at the national level and the regional land administration bureaus of Amhara, Oromia, SNNP, Tigray, Afar, and Somali as well as the Harari Regional State and the Dire Dawa City Administrative Council, under four components:
- Improve legal and policy frameworks at national and local levels;
- Strengthen capacity in national, regional, and local land administration and use planning;
- Strengthen capacity of Ethiopian universities to engage in policy analysis and research related to land tenure and train land administration and land use professionals; and
- Strengthen community land rights in pastoral and agro-pastoral areas to facilitated market linkages and economic growth.
Activities under Component 1 will further strengthen rural land legal and regulatory frameworks developed under previous projects. Technical assistance under Component 2 will focus on building capacity at the national and regional levels, improve land administration services delivery, and develop land use plans using cost effective methodologies. Well-trained and skilled land administration professionals are essential to achieving and sustaining the development impact of USAID’s LTPR investments. LAND will employ a strategic mix of grants and technical assistance under Component 3 to strengthen the capacity of Ethiopian universities to develop undergraduate land administration curricula and summer short course degree programs for mid-level land administration officials to build land administration capacity sustainably beyond the life of LAND. Universities will also be supported to carry out research and assess Government of Ethiopia (GoE) policies promoting tenure security, increased agricultural production and food security, and sustainable management of land and natural resources.
Activities under Component 4 will expand USAID interventions to pastoral locations in Oromia, Afar, and Somali Regional States. Approximately 60 percent of Ethiopia’s land is under pastoral and agropastoral habitation and production, but has been historically viewed as having low economic value. LAND will work with pastoral communities in pilot locations to establish community organizations and/or strengthen customary institutions to serve as a community landholding and governance entity (CLGE) in which certified community land rights will vest. The CLGE will represent the community before the government, in dealings with investors and will ensure the benefits of land are equitably shared among all members of the community, including women and vulnerable groups such as those transitioning out of pastoralism. In collaboration with Pastoralist Resiliency Improvement and Market Empowerment (PRIME), a sister USAD/Ethiopia Mission-supported project, LAND will support participatory mapping activities with local land administration officials and pastoral communities in pilot locations to demarcate community boundaries and produce land use plans that promote optimal economic use of land and protect scarce natural resources. Empowering pastoral communities to make decisions over the use of their land and natural resources will help to improve governance environment at the local level. LAND will seek to maximize development impacts by collaborating closely with PRIME to link communities through their CLGE to market opportunities presented by PRIME’s initiatives to create livestock value chains.