Document Type: Briefs

USAID is piloting approaches to document the customary land rights of individuals and communities in rural Zambia. Yet currently there are less than 40 certified land surveyors in all of Zambia, which presents a significant challenge to efforts aimed at documenting and strengthening the land rights of rural Zambians. To address these constraints, USAID is building the capacity of a local grantee, the Chipata District Land Alliance (CDLA), to integrate high-resolution satellite imagery and basic GIS technology into its community engagement approaches.

Project staff developed a series of trainings that build the skills of CDLA Community Facilitators in both the soft skills of facilitation and the technical elements of spatial data collection and analysis. From August to October 2014, ten CDLA facilitators participated in four 3-5 day trainings on GPS/GIS Basics; Mobile Data Collection; Participatory Rural Appraisal; and Data Integration. This was the first training series of its kind for all of the participants. The courses were structured around a hands-on, interactive approach, and the time between the training modules provided a chance for the facilitators to deepen their skills and identify new questions. CDLA Program Coordinator, Noreen Miti, says: “[The project] has helped the CDLA move from being an organization that responds to conflicts after they emerge to now assisting farmers and traditional authorities to secure their rights and avoid conflicts.”

Community Facilitators learned how to manipulate GPS units and develop community maps using two free mapping platforms. They then learned how to link spatial information to data collected from participatory sketch maps and discussions with community members on land governance. Finally, the facilitators developed a customized work flow that will allow them to map community land uses and document village-level resource governance rules.

There is a clear hunger for training in spatial and participatory mapping skills. Since the training, one CDLA Community Facilitator, Moses Kasoka, has registered in a USAID-funded online GIS training. He notes: “After my work with CDLA, a Master’s degree in GIS will just be review.” Additionally, the Zambia Land Alliance has asked the project to train its staff in these processes and methodologies. Even these efforts to expand local technical capacity will not be adequate to meet the growing need for basic spatial mapping skills. Over the coming months, the project will develop spatial mapping trainings aimed at traditional leaders, particularly Indunas, the primary advisors to and administrators for Zambia’s 273 Chiefs. It is hoped that by working directly with Zambia’s traditional authorities and building on their largely existing structures, a sustainable and legitimate system for documenting and more transparently administering customary lands will improve customary landholders’ tenure security within Zambia’s existing legal framework.

This policy research brief on land tenure reform and government revenue aims primarily to examine the effects of land tenure reforms on land-based revenue and to provide policy recommendations that would build on existing efforts developed to ease the process of paying and collecting various land revenue. The research topic was suggested by land sector stakeholders among other topics during the LAND Project’s Year 3 Work Planning Meeting, and was endorsed by the Rwanda Natural Resources Authority and LAND Project as an important research area.

In Kenya’s traditional, patriarchal Maasai society, women are gaining a new voice and increasingly, seeing their rights to land being recognized and upheld. Twenty-two women were elected as community elders in 2013, up from 14 in 2012, and zero three years ago. This transformation was made possible thanks to a USAID-supported pilot project, Enhancing Customary Justice Systems in the Mau Forest, also known as the Kenya Justice Project (KJP). KJP started during a unique window of opportunity that opened following violent post-election conflict in 2007/8. The violence led to the adoption of a new progressive constitution in 2010. This new constitution enshrines women’s equal rights to property and formalizes the role of traditional leaders as local dispute resolvers.

KJP focused on educating key stakeholder groups through legal literacy and skills trainings, peer sessions, community conversations, and public information activities to increase legal knowledge around constitutional rights and traditional leaders’ responsibilities related to land. The project also demonstrated to Kenyan and U.S. government officials that land is the number one issue of concern for rural communities. While the pilot was designed specifically for the Mau Forest, it could be adapted in other regions. To help replicate the success of the KJP model across Kenya, additional funding was allocated in 2014 for a second phase of KJP to produce a new draft implementation guide to make the model replicable.

The implementation guide outlines KJP’s underlying principles, and the steps, resources and time needed to prepare for and launch similar efforts in new communities. Although the pilot had little funding across phases—only $490,000 to date—it secured buy-in from key players in the Kenyan government, including the Deputy Chief Justice. Importantly, it implemented education and behavior change activities at a comfortable pace using trainers who were respected members of the local community. Awareness raising activities continue to be targeted toward the government and NGOs in order to promote the project and encourage a gender-sensitive approach to the integration of the formal and informal justice systems.

Education and high-level buy-in were the keys to the success of this unique pilot project. Within the community, education was targeted at all levels and groups—from traditional elders and chiefs, to youth and children, and women. Each group learned about and discussed their rights under the constitution. Traditional leaders came to see the important role they play under this new constitution: they are responsible for upholding women’s rights to land. At the same time, they came to see the important role that women play in the community and the benefits that all families could experience by securing women’s rights to land. With this different perspective, traditional leaders invited women to become elders and sit with them to decide local cases. Women and men became confident that they could claim their rights through a more impartial legal process instead of using violence or extra-judicial means. USAID’s Senior Rule of Law Advisor, Ms. Achieng Akumu observed, “People are hungry for this – they have seen the improvement in their lives and are ready for it with the constitution’s devolution of rights.”

According to KJP’s implementing partner, Landesa, “With broader implementation, the transformation that has taken place in the pilot community of Ol Pusimoru can take hold across Kenya, enhancing women’s rights and economic opportunities for all.” With additional funding for training-the-trainer activities and field tests of the model in additional rural communities, the KJP pilot can be sustainably handed off for host-country ownership and scaled across Kenya.

Read more about the Kenya Justice Project.

The GIA’s famous “four C’s”—color, clarity, cut and carat (weight)—help millions of consumers choose engagement rings each year, but for an artisanal diamond miner, that knowledge can be the difference between earning a piece of bread or a new house.

Since a diamond of the same weight can cost pennies or millions, buyers often exploit the lack of knowledge—and use inaccurate weighing scales—to cheat miners of a fair price.The GIA’s famous “four C’s”—color, clarity, cut and carat (weight)—help millions of consumers choose engagement rings each year, but for an artisanal diamond miner, that knowledge can be the difference between earning a piece of bread or a new house.

Through its Property Rights and Artisanal Diamond Development (PRADD II) program, USAID is helping empower miners in Côte d’Ivoire through training and the distribution of accurate electronic weighing scales to cooperatives.

“We’ve noticed at least a 0.2 carat difference between the old scales and the new scales,” said Fofana Abou of the Diarabana cooperative.” In nearby Bobi, villager leaders have banned all sales that do not use the new scales.

Through a unique partnership with the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), PRADD offered a world-class rough diamond valuation training to six cooperative members. PRADD is working on simplified follow-up trainings to reach more miners.

The GIA training also included Côte d’Ivoire’s customs officials. Before the decade-long civil war, authorities calculated taxes using a per-kilo rate, leading to a major loss in tax revenue that could have otherwise been used for social development projects.

“Thanks to these new techniques, we can now better collect taxes when exporting diamonds,” said Commander Tia of the Ivoirian Customs service at the training’s closing ceremony.

Accurate diamond valuation is also an essential part of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, since a diamond’s value is like a “fingerprint” used to trace stones. In addition, accurate valuation can be a tool to detect money laundering.

“The GIA training in Côte d’Ivoire is an essential part of the country’s transition from the U.N. embargo,” said Mark van Bockstael, chair of the Kimberley Process Working Group on Diamond Experts, who attended the closing ceremony. The government of Belgium plans on funding an internship for Ivoirian valuators in Antwerp in the coming months.

PRADD played a key support role in getting the UN diamond ban lifted in April 2014, and its activities aim at strengthening Kimberley Process compliance and improving the lives and livelihoods of small-scale miners.

The USAID Property Rights and Artisanal Diamond Development Program (PRADD II) supports governments to implement mining best practices in Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea, and promotes good governance of the mining sector at the international level through the Kimberley Process, the international mechanism that prevents rough diamonds from fueling conflict. The program—a $19 million five-year joint USAID/European Union initiative.

Burma is one of the world’s most ethnically diverse countries with ethnic minority groups concentrated in the upland regions. Increasingly, upland communities are finding it harder to sustain food security in the face of the triple challenges of growing population pressures, commercial land acquisitions, and climate change. Households in these communities are struggling with smaller parcels of land and insecure land rights, as they practice a complex yet adaptable rotational fallow system (taungya). Under the new Vacant, Fallow and Virgin Land Act of 2012, such community fallow land is at risk of being considered vacant and idle and handed out as concessions to businesses.

To support land rights for ethnic minority villages, the Land Core Group (LCG) is implementing a study of customary communal land tenure in northern Shan and Chin states in order to recommend to the government procedures for communal land registration. The Myo Haung village in northern Shan experienced a loss of land to outside interests in the past. As a result, the Secretary of the Village Committee, U San Saw, welcomed the LCG’s approach to clarify and recognize secure community-based property rights. He emphasized that “we wanted to start by protecting the land rights at the community level because we cannot afford to go through the costly process of recognizing individual land rights.”

Underscoring the importance of documenting community land rights, Mr. U Maung Taing, the headmaster of the local school, explained that, “we don’t have any conflicts over land rights or management within the village itself. Everyone knows whose land belongs to who. If there are conflicts, village elders and community leaders help to resolve them quickly.” The participatory pilot process has helped the village to first form a Land Caretaker Committee and then to establish a map of village boundaries in agreement with neighboring villages. There is no legislation in Myanmar supporting communal tenure, but the Farmland Law of 2012 mentions an “organization” or “association” as a potential right-holder along with individual farmers. The LCG has therefore developed statutes with the village to seek the endorsement from the General Administration Department of the village as an “association” under the new Association Law. The next steps to conduct a forum with the government on procedures to formally register these rights are underway. Many neighboring villages have been curious about this process and are considering the same path to land security.

This LCG work complements the Government of Burma’s National Land Use Policy process, which is being developed with support from USAID and other donors. The draft policy affirms the importance of land tenure security for smallholder farmers, including ethnic minorities whose communal land rights are based on customary law. Going forward, USAID will work closely with government, civil society and other donors in Burma to support similar innovative pilots that promote a balanced approach to land management.

Just talking about land restitution in some parts of Colombia can put a person at risk. The climate of fear surrounding the topic in the northern Colombian department of Cordoba is particularly heavy. Public confidence in state institutions and processes is at rock bottom because of a lack of coherence between the various state entities involved in critical land processes, co-option by local legal/illegal power structures, and corruption.

Recent policies like the Victims and Land Restitution Law (Victims Law) promote victims’ rights and reconciliation on paper, but turning theory to action on the ground has proven challenging.

To tackle this problem, USAID’s Land and Rural Development Program (LRDP) teamed up with several local universities, the Land Restitution Unit in Cordoba, civil society, the Organization of American State’s Mission to Support the Peace Process in Colombia, and governmental control agencies to provide a training course on the Victims Law for victims, victims’ representatives, journalists, and public officials from the institutions involved in the land restitution process.

Forty-nine students graduated from the three-month course on August 1, 2014. GOC officials now have increased skills and knowledge about how to apply the law, especially those aspects of it related to land restitution, thereby improving implementation and inter-institutional coordination. The curriculum was designed to empower victims and the NGO representatives who support them to utilize existing tools defined in the law to protect and claim their rights. Journalists finished the course with a solid conceptual foundation of the law and its implementation to better inform the public about this new public policy in a transparent and effective manner. Building official capacity will help restore citizen trust and confidence in the restitution process.

Conducting the training course in Cordoba, one of the departments most affected by the armed conflict, also had important symbolic implications. Many of the students were themselves victims of land takeovers and forced displacement. GOC officials participated side-by-side with victims. Promoting spaces for learning and discussion such as this certificate course send a clear message that the government stands with victims.

Based on feedback received from victims and public officials, LRDP plans to continue to support opportunities to promote enhanced citizen awareness through venues such as this certificate course, as well as design more in-depth trainings that cover specific topics of interest.

The purpose of the Land Administration to Nurture Development (LAND) Project is to assist the federal and regional state governments in their endeavors to strengthen rural land tenure security and implement policies and plans that facilitate and encourage investment and appropriate use of land for improved productivity and hence better food security and livelihoods.

LAND is implemented by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Regional governments with funding from the United State Agency for International Development (USAID).

African governments increasingly recognize the potential for land-based development to feed the rural poor and growing urban populations, and to promote equitable human development. Good land policy is central to productive land-based development across farm sizes and types. It enables inclusive, sustainable growth. Governance of, and access to, land is the most important policy choice facing Africa. This issue will determine whether Africa’s growing rural economies follow a Latin America model dominated by large heavily capitalized farms existing side by side with marginal smallholders, or an Asian model dominated by smallholders who increased their prosperity and reduced rural poverty through increased agricultural productivity. This briefer includes the following sections:

• Farmland Patterns Determine the Path to Prosperity
• Effective Land Rights and Access Matter
• Increasing Land-Based Investment in a World of Poor Governance
• Some Viable Interventions Within Food Security Programming

In Zambia’s Galileya village, a Mr. Njovu reported that he planted a large number of musangu trees to improve the fertility of his soil. He learned about agroforestry – the interplanting of native trees and shrubs with crops – from international development organizations, and Mr. Njovu now attributes his successful maize harvest to his to his use of agroforestry. Research shows that farmers who invest in agroforestry see positive benefits such as increased crop productivity and soil fertility, reduced variability in yields, and higher, more reliable farm income. However, agroforestry has not been widely adopted for reasons that may include its upfront financial and labor investments, delayed benefits, or farmers’ perception that they may lose their land before realizing the benefits of their investments. Research has not examined these barriers until now. USAID has just launched a pilot project and impact evaluation to test their hypothesis that when farmers feel that their land tenure is secure, they have incentives to invest in agroforestry.

USAID’s climate smart agriculture pilot, being launched in Zambia, seeks to demonstrate this linkage. In order to gather evidence to show what role, if any, tenure security plays in the adoption of agroforestry, USAID is implementing a third-party impact evaluation. USAID and its implementing partners have worked together to design an impact evaluation involving a randomized control trial – generally regarded as the most rigorous design for an impact evaluation – to measure the impact of the tenure and agroforestry interventions on rural farmers.

A baseline survey of 4,000 households in 315 villages will be completed prior to the launch of pilot project interventions and again after the completion of the project. To see how strong tenure contributes to agroforestry adoption, villages will randomly be assigned to receive either an agroforestry intervention, land tenure intervention, both agroforestry and land tenure interventions, or neither intervention (the control group). It is anticipated that once a village has been selected for the tenure intervention, most if not all households’ land in that village will be certified. With the strong impact evaluation design, USAID expects to see a higher uptake of agroforestry in the group that receives both the agroforestry and tenure interventions.

Artisanal diamond mining in Forécariah, Guinea, dates to 1993, when a war broke out in neighboring Sierra Leone. Refugees fled the war and migrated to Forécariah, where they started to explore for diamonds. Alluvial diamond deposits were located not through sophisticated geological surveys, but through traditional techniques which consist primarily of detecting the presence of diamonds through the presence of indicator stones of a thin gravel layer. In this district, neither the government nor industry has ever conducted geological research.

In 2010, an unexpected surge in the percentage of diamond exports from Guinea occurred. As a result, the Kimberley Process authorities commissioned a team of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the World Diamond Council to conduct an assessment of diamond production potential in Guinea. Field visits were carried out throughout the country. In the end, the USGS decided to pilot an in-depth geological survey in Forécariah to test out new geological survey methodologies.

In the meantime, the Directorate of Mines carried out a process of parceling out more than 100 mining plots in Forécariah as a way to organize, control, and monitor artisanal diamond mining, which was until then managed by customary landowners. The parceling operation was aimed at expanding the state’s presence in the artisanal diamond sector, and ensuring that the sector be monitored and controlled by the government. Parceling is the legal procedure for the Ministry of Mines to formalize and regulate artisanal mining in order to obtain compliance with the Kimberley Process. This process, though intended to allow the government to clarify and secure access to sub-surface rights, has not been linked to geological data showing the probable presence of alluvial diamonds. Miners have been reluctant to purchase parcels in Forécariah because they see no relation between the location of the parcel and the propensity to find diamonds. Since demarcation was launched in 2013, only five out of 100 parcels have been purchased. Clearly, the process is not working.

During the design of the PRADD II program in Guinea in early 2014, the Ministry of Mines and Energy emphasized the need to map out the location of diamond-bearing artisanal mining sites. The USGS agreed to test out new methods to map diamondiferous sites through high-resolution aerial mapping linked and modeling of geological parameters. The results of this study will help the ministry link licensed plots to the propensity to extract diamonds in alluvial deposits. This in turn should help diamond miners increase their return on investments and eventually reduce environmental damage through rehabilitation of mined-out sites. The USGS hopes to present initial survey results by December 2014 and, if the methodology is successful, scale it up throughout the country.

The USGS team brought into Guinea a small DJI Phantom quadcopter to conduct the aerial photography of all of the six artisanal diamond-mining sites in Forécariah. The mini-helicopter took 6000 low-altitude but high-resolution photos and sampled sites for the geological modeling. The vignettes below provide a glimpse of the reactions of local communities. Interest in new technologies in Africa starts at the grassroots!

Elhadj Mamadouba Bangoura, Imam of the village of Bassia, Guinea, recounted to a PRADD II team member, “Yesterday [Saturday, June 21, 2014], some members of our community informed me that they heard a message on the radio saying that an aircraft will be flying over our area to map out the diamond-mining sites. I think that this is an excellent thing if it can help identify diamond-bearing sites.”

Momo Bangoura, resident of nearby Woula, joined the conversation. “As far as the flyover mission is concerned, our authorities have informed us, and we were waiting for it because it will help the government to improve its parceling operation [mining claim registration]. Personally, I am not happy with the way the parceling has been conducted so far, because the sites on which it was conducted are our farmlands. However, if the helicopter can help identify the sites where diamonds are, this will keep masters from purchasing parcels that do not bear diamonds and leave those for agriculture.”

Mabinty Bangoura, a female miner in Safoulen, added, “I am conducting this diamond mining to only be able to feed my kids. My family is in Sierra Leone and I am here for work. If the flyover of this helicopter can help us to know where to work and have diamonds, I ensure you that this is a good thing. In this case, everyone (the village, miners, and the government) will gain something.”

A woman in Kourouya held the mini-quadracopter in her hands, saying, “Nobody is going to tell me about it later. I heard of it before, I am here, and now I have seen it and I am holding it.”

Following the USGS team’s presentation of its preliminary field results at a debriefing for the Minister of Mines and Geology in Conakry, Minister Kerfalla Yansané asked a broader question of how the USGS might use this technology for mapping other minerals in Guinea given the lack of up-to-date geospatial information at the Ministry. He noted the long process it usually takes for mining companies to provide such data. He expressed his interest in formally requesting assistance from US government agencies to scale up this approach to cover other minerals.