Document Type: Progress Reports

The goal of the Improving Land Access for Women (ILAW) Activity is to increase social cohesion, reduce land conflicts, and empower women to contribute to their communities economically by strengthening their legal access to land in the Northern and Western regions of Côte d’Ivoire (CDI). ILAW will achieve this goal through two performance objectives: Objective 1 – Empower communities in Northern and Western CDI through awareness raising, advocacy, and communication campaigns on land and women’s rights in Western and Northern CDI; and Objective 2 – Strengthen women’s access to legal and conflict mediation services in rural and urban areas to ensure their access to land in Northern and Western CDI.

The ILAW Activity runs from 2021 to 2024 as a Task Order under the Strengthening Tenure and Resource Rights (STARR) II Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract. The ILAW Activity is implemented in two zones of the country: the northern zone encompassing the regions of Poro, Béré, and Tchologo; and the western zone encompassing the regions of Cavally, Guémon, and Tonkpi. ILAW implements its activities in close partnership with local organizations Rural Organization in Korhogo (ARK), Humanitarian Assistance and Development Council (CAHD), Initiative for Dialogue and Research Action for Peace (INDIGO), and Association of Women Legal Practitioners in Côte d’Ivoire (AFJCI).

As approved by the USAID Contracting Officer’s Representative, the present Quarterly Progress Report covers the period from January 1 – March 31, 2022

Key Accomplishments and Challenges

Mozambique: ILRG’s subcontractors carrying out the first round of work related to Grupo Madal and Green Resources SA (GRAS) have all finished or are in the final phases of their work. ILRG continues to pursue discussions with the National Directorate of Land on its concerns about delimitation of parcels outside of the formal titling process, with a technical meeting to be scheduled early in the next quarter. New activities for the final 18 months of the ILRG program have been designed and are being modified to enable startup of work even while discussions with the directorate continue. These involve new support for Madal’s extension system with neighboring farmers and delimitation of communities around Madal’s plantations; support to nine communities in management of plantations renounced last year by GRAS; and support to displaced people and host communities in Sofala.

Zambia: ILRG grantees and subcontractors, including Zambia Land Alliance (ZLA), Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS), Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO), Wildlife Producers Association of Zambia (WPAZ), and Zambia Community Resources Board Association (ZCRBA), each began field implementation of new agreements on customary land documentation and administration, wildlife management and governance, and women’s empowerment. ILRG trained a cohort of 25 civil society mid-level natural resource management social outreach officers in women’s leadership and empowerment through an in-person and ongoing course. A consultant was hired to advance relationships with the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources following a meeting between the US Chargé d’Affaires and the minister. Relationships were advanced with two new USAID landscape programs in the Eastern Kafue and North Luangwa ecosystems.

India: This quarter was peak potato season in West Bengal. Untimely heavy rains and floods in early December, during potato planting, greatly affected the season and project activities. Yield is expected to be much lower than originally anticipated; farmers and aggregators experienced financial loss, with many farmers opting not to plant PepsiCo potatoes. Three out of 10 women’s land leasing groups and one women-led demonstration farm out of 12 decided not to proceed. Despite these challenges, project activities reached over 1,100 women farmers in 12 communities,1 who benefited from a variety of activities such as potato agronomy training, Sustainable Farming Practice (SFP) training, technical support from Community Agronomists, participation in Farmers’ Field Days at demonstration farms, and household-level gender norms change training. ILRG developed and implemented a comprehensive assessment plan to capture quantitative and qualitative data on impact related to WEE and business key performance indicators. As most farmers harvested their crops towards the end of the reporting period, results from the season will be shared in the next quarter.

Liberia: Sustainable Development Institute (SDI) finished their support to 31 communities in Lofa, Maryland, and River Gee Counties through the collection and confirmation of community boundary data. All 31 communities received a Certificate of Completion of Community Self-Identification at the National Land Conference in early March, which formally recognized them as customary land-owning communities. Green Advocates International (GAI) continued work in the five ILRG-supported communities in Nimba County, conducting awareness raising of the boundary harmonization process and training communities in alternative dispute resolution. ILRG competed a request for applications for a third grant focusing on customary land rights formalization; the resulting grant agreement is expected to be finalized early in the next quarter.

Malawi: ILRG continues to support the Government of Malawi in the land documentation efforts in 18 group village headpersons (GVHs) in Traditional Area (TA) Mwansambo. ILRG selected and trained 16 data collectors (nine women and seven men) and eight data processors (five women and three men) early in the quarter and established an office for processing data in Nkhotakota. Data on over 1,300 parcels was collected within the first month of work. ILRG engaged consultants and began implementation of three different workshops, focusing on women’s empowerment and leadership for women in customary land committees (CLCs); household gender norms dialogues with men and women; and gender norms dialogues with traditional authorities.

Ghana Deforestation Free Cocoa: The team finalized details of the payment for ecosystem services (PES) scheme developed in partnership with Ecom Agroindustrial Corp. (ECOM) and Hershey; the standard operating procedures were finalized and reviewed with the communities. ILRG submitted the draft economic analysis of proposed tree tenure reform to USAID and will revise in response to USAID comments early in the next quarter.

Ghana WEE: ILRG partner ECOM’s Sustainable Management Services (SMS) onboarded a Gender and Sustainability Specialist, who will coordinate implementation in Ghana, including engagement at company and farmer levels. The Gender and Inclusion Specialist is leading the development of a country gender equality and social inclusion (GESI) policy, which will be informed by ECOM’s global sustainability strategy and information collected through a gender audit style survey with all management and field staff, completed over this quarter. ECOM SMS and ILRG are revising the company’s existing gender and Good Social Practices (GSP) training programs to strengthen gender content and include dialogues to shift harmful gender norms that hinder women’s access to resources, which will be delivered to up to 2,290 farmers (50 percent women) in 65 communities. Over this quarter farmer sensitization began, reaching over 1,100 farmers. ECOM SMS also held meetings with local stakeholders, including local government, to gain their support and buy-in. As part of activities to diversify economic opportunities for women in cocoa communities, ECOM SMS mobilized 391 women farmers who formed 15 village savings and loans associations (VSLAs) in 12 communities.

WEE Cross-Cutting: ILRG developed, published, and disseminated external and internal communications materials for International Women’s Day (IWD). A blog post highlighting women leading land and resource governance in India, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia was published and promoted through social media. A series of short messages with stories of women who are leading their communities towards inclusive land and resource governance were shared with around 130 staff and partners across all program countries. ILRG supported USAID to deliver a learning session for the land advisors community of practice on gender norms change.

Madagascar: The ILRG Madagascar team continued to provide technical support to the Comité du Gestion du Bassin Sambirano (COGEBS) to provide training to its members on land tenure and property rights. The two-person team of land specialists offered a two-hour introduction to the tenure issues of the valley to the General Assembly and will carry out a more in-depth three-day training for key stakeholders after the rainy season passes. A study tour for the COGEBS Executive Committee to the Boeney region to learn of successful land securitization programs is planned for July, accompanied by advocacy meetings in Antananarivo. The team completed and presented a strategic document on administrative ways to address the issue of ex-Indigenous Reserves.

Other Activities: ILRG supported the PPA in planning a third phase and new memorandum of understanding (MoU) governing its activities and continued planning for member-focused and external stakeholder engagement opportunities. ILRG continued to support subcontractor International Peace Information Service (IPIS) in mapping artisanal mine sites and conflict financing dynamics in eastern DRC. This work has extended to information sharing with local monitoring committees, multi-stakeholder fora, and United States government (USG) and DRC government stakeholders. With respect to work on Prindex collaboration, ILRG is preparing a revised report on the data collection and analysis, responding to USAID and peer feedback; the executive summary of that report will be the basis for producing a lessons learned brief. Additional research activities in support of USAID are also underway.

Key Accomplishments and Challenges

During this quarter, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic continued to impact the countries in which ILRG operates. Despite this constraint, field activities continued to move forward and country teams marked some significant accomplishments.

Mozambique: The ILRG activity supporting smallholder timber production ended during the period, having met all targets. The activity reached 72 participants, of whom 48 (69 percent) were women (compared to the target of reaching 50 participants). Over 5,000 saplings were planted and are thriving, with growers already harvesting products, such as leaves used for medicinal purposes. The five service providers carrying out work in Green Resources and Grupo Madal areas all requested no-cost extensions into the next quarter. By the end of the period, 81 communities around Green Resources AS (GRAS) and Grupo Madal plantations had delimited over 391,000 hectares. In the 14 communities around Madal plantations, all fieldwork was finished for 3,979 parcels, leaving only the final four public adjudication processes and production of Declarations of Land Rights. GRAS service providers are finalizing the last community delimitations and preparing contracts to legally pass improvements (infrastructure and existing trees) over to communities. ILRG’s inability to find agreement with the Ministry of Lands and Environment led to a cancellation of the anticipated support to internally displaced people from Cabo Delgado; USAID/Mozambique agreed to reprogram those funds to increase the scope of the Sofala work with families displaced by floods from cyclones.

Zambia: The first year of the diploma course for traditional leaders with over thirty chiefs was completed alongside the launch of gender guidelines for traditional leadership in partnership with the Ministry of Gender and Minister of Local Government. These guidelines will be piloted during the coming year. ILRG started work in four USAID priority districts around gender-responsive land allocation and engaged in the Kafue and Luangwa landscapes with the Department of National Parks and Wildlife (DNPW), traditional leaders and district government on controlling land allocation and expansion within game management areas (GMAs). ILRG natural resource management partners led a coordination process to communicate joint priorities from civil society, private sector, and communities to the new government minister. ILRG also hosted a joint meeting between DNPW and the Forestry Department (FD) to navigate issues around forest carbon legislation. ILRG continued successful engagement with civil society on gender integration in natural resource management and land documentation. Finally, ILRG launched new agreements with Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO), Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS), Wildlife Producers Association of Zambia (WPAZ), and the Zambia Land Alliance (ZLA), and began negotiations for a new agreement with the Zambia Community Resources Board Association (ZCRBA).

Ghana: Field work on land governance and community land use planning continued and two field trips finalized key aspects of the payment for ecosystem services (PES) scheme being developed. Work continues to secure more diverse tree species to be planted in the next round of tree planting under the PES in 2022. The economic analysis of tree tenure reform continued and is undergoing final internal quality review.

India: The 2021 – 2022 potato season began this quarter. ILRG delivered training on Sustainable Farming Practices (SFPs) and started delivering agronomy training for PepsiCo women farmers. Women farmers were identified to lead land leasing groups (LLGs) and demonstration farms. The number of Community Agronomists was expanded to 18, covering all 12 target communities. Uptake of women’s empowerment activities was observed, as aggregators/vendors independently recruited and engaged Community Agronomists in areas outside of ILRG communities. The COVID-19 pandemic continued to affect project activities, impacting the number of people reached by various trainings and requiring some activities to be postponed, including gender norms change sessions, entrepreneurship training for women farmers, and gender-based violence (GBV) training for PepsiCo staff. An untimely rain and flooding in early December have deeply affected potato farmers in West Bengal who had just planted or were about to plant potatoes for the season. Substantial loss and low yield are expected.

Liberia: ILRG grantees continued to support customary land documentation in 36 communities in Lofa,
Maryland, Nimba, and River Gee Counties. Sustainable Development Institute (SDI) began to collect community boundary data and harmonize the boundaries with neighboring communities. Green Advocates resumed work in Nimba County after receiving guidance from the Liberia Land Authority. Land and resource by-laws were adopted, and land committees elected in the five ILRG-supported communities.

Malawi: ILRG completed the gender assessment in Traditional Authority (TA) Mwansambo in Nkhotakota District. ILRG supported the Government of Malawi to sensitize the leadership and men and women in TA Mwansambo on the land legal framework and the forthcoming land documentation efforts in up to 18 group village headpersons (GVHs). ILRG also supported the elections of community land committees in 17 of the 18 GVHs; newly elected members include equal numbers of men and women.

WEE: ILRG developed a communications and learning strategy with key messages and planned products and events on women’s land rights and women’s empowerment for Years 4 and 5. Information on key GBV concepts and the linkage between GBV and land, natural resources governance, and agricultural value chains was shared with all ILRG staff and in-country partners, subcontractors, and grantees during the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence. ILRG supported the delivery of an update on women’s land rights and WEE to USAID operating units and missions. ILRG also co-led a coffee chat for members of the USAID WEE Community of Practice on engaging men to advance women’s land rights and empowerment. The final two blog posts in partnership with the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) were published, sharing USAID’s best practices and lessons learned from Zambia and Liberia. ILRG signed a subcontract with Ecom Agroindustrial Corp.’s
(ECOM’s) Sustainable Management Services (SMS) in Ghana. SMS recruited a Gender and Sustainability Specialist to start in the next quarter. This 18-month activity will strengthen ECOM’s capacity on gender equality and women’s empowerment, which has a high sustainability and scalability potential, and reach 2,290 farmers (50 percent women) with gender-responsive social and agricultural training and opportunities for income diversification.

Madagascar: The Comité de Gestion de Bassin Sambirano (COGEBS) is now fully functional and legally recognized and has an initial work plan in place. The ILRG Madagascar team played a key role in advocating to the Region of Diana for legal recognition of this innovative landscape governance institution. Among the top initial COGEBS priorities was a request for ILRG to provide training on land tenure issues confronting the Sambirano Valley, which led to a highly acclaimed two-day training program in November for the COGEBS Executive Committee. A consultant also completed a short document spelling out the processes and steps for identifying the location, extent, and procedures to sell state-owned lands, once labor reserves during the colonial period, to current occupants or those with the means to pay the high costs of land transfers. The procedures for carrying out the government-sponsored opération domaniale concertée (ODOC) are now well known and the costs have been documented.

Other Activities: ILRG supported the PPA in strategic planning for a second phase of its activities, the facilitation of a virtual United States government (USG) delegation to the Great Lakes Region to discuss key issues in the responsible minerals trade, and the recruitment and onboarding of new and prospective member organizations. ILRG continued to support subcontractor International Peace Information Service (IPIS) in mapping artisanal mine sites and conflict financing dynamics in eastern DRC. IPIS continued to cooperate with the DRC Small-Scale and Artisanal Mining Assistance and Support Service (SAEMAPE) to facilitate data collection visits by IPIS field team members to key mining sites.

Introduction

United States Agency for International Development (USAID)/Ethiopia contracted Tetra Tech as the prime contractor to implement the five-year Feed the Future Ethiopia Land Governance Activity (LGA) Task Order under the Strengthening Tenure and Resource Rights II (STARR II) Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) Contract. Tetra Tech will implement the LGA over a five-year period from May 2019 to May 2024. This Quarterly Report No. 10 summarizes implementation progress made during the period of July 1 – September 30, 2021 (Quarter 4, FY 2021).

LGA’s purpose is to support the Government of Ethiopia (GOE), its regions, and citizens to strengthen land governance, increase incomes, reduce conflict, and support well-planned urbanization, thereby contributing to the country’s Ten-Year Development Plan. To help achieve these goals, LGA is implementing interventions under two components:

Component 1: Strengthening the land governance system

1. Facilitate policy reforms and strengthen land administration and land use institutions by promoting structural reforms of rural and urban institutions and the land information system.
2. Improve technical capacity for suitable land administration and land use planning activities to address emerging issues, such as urbanization, industrialization, and youth.
3. Conduct policy-oriented research on land governance and provide scalable solutions to improve land governance.

Component 2: Expanding communal land tenure security in pastoral areas

1. Expand communal land tenure security in pastoral areas through improved policy and legal reform.
2. For pastoral community lands, develop a scalable approach for land demarcation, registration, and certification in collaboration with community institutions.

Introduction

United States Agency for International Development (USAID)/Ethiopia contracted Tetra Tech as the prime contractor to implement the five-year Feed the Future Ethiopia Land Governance Activity (LGA) Task Order under the Strengthening Tenure and Resource Rights II (STARR II) Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) Contract. Tetra Tech will implement the LGA over a five-year period from May 2019 to May 2024. This Quarterly Report No. 15 summarizes implementation progress made during the period of April 1 – June 30, 2021 (Quarter 3, FY 2021).

LGA’s purpose is to support the Government of Ethiopia (GOE), its regions, and citizens to strengthen land governance, increase incomes, reduce conflict, and support well-planned urbanization, thereby contributing to the country’s Ten-Year Development Plan. To help achieve these goals, LGA is implementing interventions under two components:

Component 1: Strengthening the land governance system

1. Facilitate policy reforms and strengthen land administration and land use institutions by promoting structural reforms of rural and urban institutions and the land information system.
2. Improve technical capacity for suitable land administration and land use planning activities to address emerging issues, such as urbanization, industrialization, and youth.
3. Conduct policy-oriented research on land governance and provide scalable solutions to improve land governance.

Component 2: Expanding communal land tenure security in pastoral areas

1. Expand communal land tenure security in pastoral areas through improved policy and legal reform.
2. For pastoral community lands, develop a scalable approach for land demarcation, registration, and certification in collaboration with community institutions.

Key Accomplishments and Challenges

During this third quarter of fiscal year (FY) 2021, despite widespread vaccination in the US, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic continued to negatively impact ILRG project countries. Southern Africa began to experience a third wave of COVID-19 following large outbreaks in India. While many members of the ILRG team have been able to gain access to vaccines, partners and community members remain at high risk.

Mozambique: ILRG’s six implementing partners are all in the main phase of their implementation with
over 100 communities. The work includes land delimitation, planning for community delimitation, and
support to agricultural production on previously delimited land. National coordination with the USAID Supporting the Policy Environment for Economic Development (SPEED) program continued on policy and law. ILRG provided various types of support to the National Land Commission and the Ministry of Land and Environment, including the launch on Earth Day 2021 of a portal with details of over 20,000 interviews done as part of the national consultation on the review of the land policy. Planning to support land administration in areas of internal displacement due to disasters and conflict moved ahead, with new agreements in Sofala and Cabo Delgado Provinces.

Zambia: Zambia’s National Lands Policy was launched this quarter following over seven years of USAID support to the process. This was complemented by ILRG assistance to the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources on a communications strategy. ILRG shared the policy widely including with a presentation to the heads of mission for cooperating partners (donors). ILRG’s partnerships on community-based natural resource management continued with a leadership training with the Zambia Community Resources Board Association (ZCRBA) executive leadership, as well as continued support to engendering elections with the Department of National Parks and Wildlife (DNPW). DNPW opened a process for making amendments to the Wildlife Act of 2015, and ILRG helped civil society coordinate among themselves. With respect to learning, ILRG hosted a series of webinars on community forest management, as well as private wildlife estates; and carried out the second two-week residential course for customary leaders with Chalimbana University. Land documents were finalized for thousands of households and ILRG received positive feedback from the Ministry of Local Government on local area planning processes.

Ghana: The payment for ecosystem services (PES) component and associated field work was delayed due to issues finalizing corporate commitments to fund the PES. Direct engagement between USAID and the corporate partners helped address the issue, which is expected to be resolved shortly. Meridia produced an online and hardcopy database of all the FarmSeal documents produced under ILRG and the Tenure and Global Climate Change program (TGCC) and shared it with the stool. Ecom Agroindustrial Corp. (ECOM) shared the latest season’s crop yields for the cash crops planted as part of the cocoa rehabilitation program. Yields of chili had increased substantially compared to the prior season, but all crops produced less yields overall than forecasted. The implications of this for the rehabilitation program will be discussed with ECOM in early July.

India: The 2020 – 2021 potato season ended during this quarter. ILRG provided agronomy training to a total of 602 women PepsiCo farmers in 12 communities, as well as a refresher training for 230 women that had been trained during the previous potato season. Six modules of training provided women with information and skills on land preparation, seed treatment, and plantation; safe use and storage of agro-chemicals; soil health and nutrient management; common pest and diseases; harvesting, sorting, and grading; and record keeping and record analysis. Both land leasing groups had a successful season and
experienced above average productivity in their areas. Communications products showcasing women’s land rights and the connection with climate change goals were published. The continued farmers’ protests in India, state elections, and a sudden increase in the number of COVID-19 cases have impacted the ability to deliver planned activities like part of the final phase of the package of practices (POP) training, sustainable farming practices (SFP) training, and gender norms change training for farmers, as well as gender-based violence (GBV) training and land literacy orientation for PepsiCo staff. Land law and policy advocacy work was also impacted by these challenges.

WEE: ILRG developed and consolidated a series of guidance tools and training materials in Portuguese
and English on women’s land rights, women’s economic empowerment, and GBV. Informed by the gender assessment findings and in coordination with ECOM, ILRG submitted a draft detailed implementation plan and budget to work on gender and cocoa sector issues. It is expected that field activities will begin over the next quarter upon approval of the implementation plan. The activity will strengthen ECOM’s capacity on gender equality and women’s empowerment, which has a high sustainability and scalability potential, and increase women’s access to productive resources in the cocoa sector. In Malawi, ILRG finalized the choice of a traditional land management area (TLMA) in which to work. This was complemented by start-up activities with ILRG’s small, Lilongwe-based team, including office rental, procurement and presentations with the Land Reform Implementation Unit (LRIU).

Liberia: ILRG continued to wait for guidance from the Liberia Land Authority (LLA) on how to proceed after it was discovered that six of the seven communities one of the ILRG grantees was collaborating with had been part of another organization’s customary land formalization program in Nimba County. The LLA met with the two civil society organizations on March 30, 2021, traveled to Nimba County in mid-May 2021 to meet with community leaders and members, and presented initial findings at a June 3, 2021 meeting. ILRG is ready to proceed with working with the Nimba communities once the go-ahead is received from the LLA. Concurrently, the other grantee drafted community land and resource governance bylaws and elected members of the community land development and management committees across its 31 communities in Lofa, Maryland and River Gee Counties.

Madagascar: ILRG presented its status updates to USAID on opportunities to improve private sector and tenure dynamics across the Sambirano Valley. Given the long-term horizon for the multi-donor program, ILRG has identified “light touch” activities for the program to pursue over the coming two years in support of the program, particularly around addressing historical tenure issues and ensuring that the partnership platform has a strong base on land and resource rights.

Other Activities: ILRG launched a new field support activity with USAID/DRC on investigating conflict financing, due diligence, and socioeconomic dynamics in the artisanal mining sector. Progress continued within the current work plans for support to USAID’s Indigenous Peoples portfolio and PPA. With respect to work on Prindex collaboration, ILRG is approaching completion of data collection in Colombia. ILRG continued discussing opportunities to coordinate with USAID on aligning research and analytical needs associated with the new administration.