Fit for Purpose Rural Land Registration at Scale: Lessons from Ethiopia

Land is a constitutional issue in Ethiopia. Article 40 of the FDRE constitution enshrines governing provisions about rural and urban land. Legislation power is given to the federal government despite this power can be delegated to regions, whereas administration power is allocated to regions. Based on the law enacted by the federal government and subordinate regional laws, Ethiopia has been implementing large-scale rural land registration for more than a decade. Some 30 million rural parcels are registered (of which about 57 % are titled jointly with the name of the spouses, and 23 % by the sole name of women). The country has developed fit-for-purpose systems, procedures, and legal systems in this process. Many important lessons can be drawn from this decade-long large-scale rural land registration implementation. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to assess the Ethiopian fit-for-purpose rural land registration system and document the lessons. A desk review research approach is applied. The preliminary findings of the research revealed that building a coordinated land registration system and preliminary planning workshops are critical. Most importantly, repeated awareness creation on the importance of the land registration system (women’s separate meetings and discussions at every stage of the process); having a standardized operating procedure; dealing with complaints and grievances through an established grievance management system; and establishing a system for registration of subsequent transactions is critical. Engaging social networks and customary institutions through the process, and getting buy-in from the politicians is an important thing. Establishing incentive mechanisms to improve performance efficiency is another lesson that expedites the process and assures the long-term objectives of the program. Having a performance monitoring and tracking system is also key in measuring the performance level and compensating for the shortcomings in the process. Capacity-building activities are also implemented along the broader land registration and certification programs, believing that implementation of land registration and certification could not be achieved without the existence of capable implementers, and in turn, is vital for the program's sustainability. Moreover, developing a Land information system that can be used as a database for the already registered parcel data and perform land-related transactions is key. Otherwise, the register data would quickly become outdated. The Ethiopian land registration system best understands the saying “Don’t start land registration unless you have a well-established updating system”. The government has implemented the cluster and Model Woreda approach in the implementation of subsequent transactions to ease the system for the users and expedite it. The use of local-level institutions; paying much attention to the cost recovery approach–payment for the information and the service and then finance the land administration sector; Incentives (both positive and negative) – through scholarships for instance, for those actively involved; and the least cost approach without compromising the quality of the work are also important lessons.