Document Type: Project Design and Implementation

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:

1. Improve legal and policy frameworks at national and local levels;
2. Strengthen capacity in national, regional, and local land administration and use planning;
3. 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
4. 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.

The Mobile Technology and Crowdsourcing to Strengthen Land Tenure Security Pilot (hereafter referred to as Mobile Technology Pilot) seeks to test a concept of a participatory or “crowdsourced approach” to capturing land rights information using mobile technology to efficiently and affordably create an inventory of land rights.

Under its Evaluation, Research and Communication (ERC) contract, the USAID Land Tenure and Property Rights Division will implement the proposed pilot activity. Under the ERC, the Mobile Technology pilot fits into USAID’s strategic reform agenda pertaining to the use of science and technology to resolve development problems. In February, 2014, USAID mobilized its ERC implementing partner, the Cloudburst Consulting Group, to explore the applicability of utilizing mobile technology to collect property rights information in Tanzania.

An inception mission was conducted between February 3 and 14, 2014 and was intended to determine whether the proposed activities envisaged in the Mobile Technology Pilot concept could be implemented in Tanzania, and that there would be interest in the program by stakeholders. Over the course of the mission a series of meetings with stakeholders from the Government of Tanzania, the donor community and civil society organizations were held, in parallel to an assessment of the land administration system to determine the applicability of the Mobile Technology Pilot.

The USAID-funded project “Supporting the Justice and Security Sector through Property Rights in Libya” (SJSSPR) is a preliminary initiative designed to address a major root cause of current social and political instability in Libya: namely, housing and land disputes. During the SJSSPR Inception Mission in November-December 2012, key challenges were assessed, goals defined, and opportunities to initiate specific supportive activities were identified. Working intermittently during the short period of six months since that initial mission, SJSSPR has introduced alternative dispute resolution (ADR) techniques to local government and non-governmental stakeholders and fostered community and national dialogue on housing, land tenure and property rights (HLP) policy options in Libya.

This succinct report provides a summary of findings and recommendations based on the conclusions of the following activities:

• An Inception Mission in November-December 2012
• A property rights policy roundtable in Tripoli on June 18, 2013
• A legal report reviewing the Draft Land Law issued by the Ministry of Justice, which was finalized in August 2013 (“Legislating Property Restitution in Libya”)
• A series of focus group discussions with specific interest groups (women’s groups, legal professionals, and businessmen) held in Tripoli from June 23-27, 2013

In addition, the SJSSPR team has conducted a second policy dialog roundtable in Tripoli at the end of August, the summary results of which are included in Annex I.

This report provides a legal review of “Draft Law No. [no number] determining certain provisions concerning properties transferred to the state, per Law No. 4 of 1978” (‘Draft Law’), which the Ministry of Justice of the Government of Libya (GoL) issued in March 2013. This report is not limited to a discussion of the Draft Law, but also highlights key issues that any restitution the Law would need to address, based on social equity and international best practices related to property restitution, including compensation.

In a letter to the Minister of Mines, KP Chair Ambassador G. Milovanovic recommended the deployment of a short-term Technical Adviser to help Côte d’Ivoire prepare and implement a roadmap towards implementing minimal elements of the peer review checklist.In cooperation with the US Department of State, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Economic Growth, Education and Environment (E3) Land Tenure Division responded favorably to this request for technical assistance.

The KP Adviser arrived in Abidjan in March 2013 and was embedded in the KP Permanent Secretariat in Côte d’Ivoire (Secrétariat Permanent de la Représentation du Processus de Kimberley en Côte d’Ivoire [SPRPK-CI]), which though inter-ministerial is housed at the Ministry of Mines, Petroleum and Energy (MMPE). The primary objective of the assistance was to assist the Secretariat develop and implement a roadmap toward KP compliance. In addition, the Adviser was to assist the government adopt best practices for management of the sector, which is primarily artisanal in nature, such as those laid out in the KP’s 2012 Washington Declaration. His task was also to help coordinate various offers of assistance, primarily from FOCDI member countries. However, the role of the Adviser was not to directly implement any specific programs or measures. The assistance completed on June 28, 2013 and this report constitutes its final deliverable.

This report assess the artisanal diamond-mining sector in Côte d’Ivoire in view of possible future US government (USG)-funded assistance to the country in support of achieving and maintaining compliance with Kimberley Process (KP) requirements. The type of assistance under consideration is in part inspired by USAID initiatives in support of KP requirements based on a property rights approach being implemented in the Central African Republic (CAR) and Liberia. However, the mission’s assignment extends only to general identification of programmatic opportunities in Côte d’Ivoire for consideration of decision makers evaluating prospects for a potential assistance program. Actual design of such an assistance program and its activities, in the event that the decision is taken to proceed to a next step, will be conducted subsequent to the present sector assessment. The ambition of the present assessment is to inform any potential future design efforts by providing all pertinent baseline information and analysis regarding the artisanal diamond-mining sector in Côte d’Ivoire.

Division indicators list for consideration under STARR IQC

The Strengthening Tenure and Resource Rights (STARR) program is a multiple-award, five-year Indefinite Quantity Contract (IQC) designed to address resource tenure issues in support of key U.S. Government (USG) strategic objectives, including but not limited to, enhanced food security as articulated in the Feed the Future Initiative; climate change adaptation and mitigation; conflict prevention and mitigation; economic growth; biodiversity protection and natural resource management; women’s empowerment and gender equality; and reduction in the spread of infectious diseases (specifically HIV/AIDS).

This program will employ a multidisciplinary approach to address complex resource tenure challenges as identified by USAID missions, Bureaus and offices, and by other USG agencies (including but not limited to Department of State, Department of Defense and the Millennium Challenge Corporation). It will provide short and long-term technical assistance that is needed to respond to the needs and opportunities available for improving security of property rights and increasing land access. STARR will advance USAID Forward’s Reform Agenda and best practice by building knowledge, testing hypotheses and implementing innovative approaches to strengthening property rights and resource tenure as a means to advance key USG strategic foreign assistance goals.

This report is a compendium of sixteen country case studies focusing on efforts to devolve forest governance to local communities and stakeholders in Latin America, Asia, the Pacific Islands, and Africa.

This study details the feasibility of microfinance services for artisanal diamond miners in the Central African Republic (CAR) and Liberia. The research methodology focused on a desk study literature review and field visits to both countries. This report first presents the findings of the literature review and the broader global experience of artisanal miners, typical financing systems and experiences with microfinance in the mining sector. Specific findings and recommendations are then provided for CAR and Liberia.