USAID LAND TENURE and PROPERTY RIGHTS PORTAL

Rural-Urban Migration and Land and Rural Development Policies in Ethiopia

A guest post by Zemen Haddis Gebeyehu, Senior Agriculture Policy Advisor, USAID/Ethiopia With 83 percent of its population living in rural areas, Ethiopia is one of the least urbanized countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Agriculture remains the main economic activity of the rural workforce. However, migration from rural areas to cities has been increasing in recent years. This week, I will present a paper that examines the relationship between migration and the land and rural development policies of Ethiopia. The study tests the hypothesis that Ethiopia’s land and rural development policies influence the dynamics of rural-urban migration in ways unanticipated by

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Bangladesh

Bangladesh will face two enormous challenges in the coming decades: food security and climate change. The remarkable growth in agricultural productivity achieved over the last 30 years through intensification and diversification of crop production is not likely to continue. Already, 45% of the 160 million people in the country are estimated to be consuming less than their daily calorie requirements; 53% are also estimated to be living below the poverty line. With a population density the highest in the world for an economy occupying a large land area, Bangladeshi farm sizes are, on average, smaller than 0.1 hectares, and even

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User account

Did you miss the online discussion on the meaning and application of “legitimate land rights?” Watch the recording here. USAID has developed two mobile applications, or apps, that support land tenure and land use. Watch this video about the apps now. Interactive map with information on U.S. Government (USAID and MCC) programs that strengthen land tenure and property rights.

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Ask the Expert: Dr. Lauren Persha

Each quarter we will interview an expert whose work touches on aspects of land tenure and resource management. These will include evaluation specialists, country experts or USAID staff. Our first interview is with Dr. Lauren Persha, Assistant Professor in Department of Geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Persha is a member of the core research team of the Impact Evaluation of USAID’s Tenure and Global Climate Change (TGCC) project in Zambia. The Impact Evaluation team’s work was presented at this year’s World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty. We asked Dr. Persha, an interdisciplinary social-ecological

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Tenure and Global Climate Change: Global

Home Active Projects Did you miss the online discussion on the meaning and application of “legitimate land rights?” Watch the recording here. USAID has developed two mobile applications, or apps, that support land tenure and land use. Watch this video about the apps now. Interactive map with information on U.S. Government (USAID and MCC) programs that strengthen land tenure and property rights.

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Central African Republic

Recent reports of a more stable political environment and more effective economic policies in the Central African Republic (CAR) have begun to indicate the possibility of a more positive future for the 4.4 million citizens of this low-income, landlocked, resource-rich and sparsely settled nation that occupies an area roughly the size of Texas. Constraints to realizing greater economic growth and human development are enormous: inadequate transport infrastructure; banking infrastructure incapable of supporting greater investments; low levels of technology; high levels of illiteracy; limited access to healthcare and education; and neighbors experiencing ongoing domestic and regional conflict (with frequent spillovers into

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Colombia

Did you miss the online discussion on the meaning and application of “legitimate land rights?” Watch the recording here. USAID has developed two mobile applications, or apps, that support land tenure and land use. Watch this video about the apps now. Interactive map with information on U.S. Government (USAID and MCC) programs that strengthen land tenure and property rights.

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Liberia

Liberia is rich in natural resources, including valuable timber species, significant biodiversity, and mineral resources, including iron ore, gold and diamonds. Agriculture provides a livelihood for the majority of the population, with most farming carried out on small landholdings, but there are also a number of large commercial plantations. Liberia has an urban-based elite, the descendants of freed slaves from the US and Caribbean. The majority of indigenous Africans live in rural areas. The land-tenure system reflects this division of the population. Throughout coastal Liberia, the urban elites use a Western statutory system of land ownership based on individual fee

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USAID Land Tenure Evidence Hub

Learn about how USAID develops and conducts land tenure impact evaluations. IMPACT EVALUATIONS There is a growing body of evidence that suggests that stronger land tenure security has a positive impact on important development outcomes, such as household investment, women’s empowerment, agricultural productivity, rental markets, and credit. While the initial evidence is encouraging, important knowledge gaps remain. Compared with the positive economic and food security gains seen from land tenure formalization programs in Asia and Latin America, results from similar programs in Africa have been mixed. There is also little evidence on the impact of alternative approaches to strengthening tenure,

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Tanzania

Tanzania’s property rights and resource governance systems have been in flux for more than 50 years. Just prior to independence in 1961, the British colonial government attempted to introduce the concept of freehold land ownership, but the proposal was rejected by TANU, the Tanzanian political party that took power when independence was granted. Instead, the new President of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere, developed and applied the concept of “African socialism,” an initiative that transferred the customary land rights of ethnic groups and clans to newly established elected village councils and encouraged collective cultivation of the land. A series of laws enacted

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SPOTLIGHTS

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

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Did you miss the online discussion on the meaning and application of “legitimate land rights?” Watch the recording here.

MOBILE SOLUTIONS MATTER

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USAID has developed two mobile applications, or apps, that support land tenure and land use. Watch this video about the apps now.

WHERE WE WORK

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Interactive map with information on U.S. Government (USAID and MCC) programs that strengthen land tenure and property rights.