Mattu University

School of Agriculture & Natural Resource Management

Department of Land Administration & Surveying

Land Tenure & Policy Reform

Summery Note
 Explain the major components of land administration, namely land
tenure, land use, land value and land information

• Land administration is defined as the process of regulating land and

property development and the use and conservation of the land, the
gathering of revenues from the land through sales, leasing, and taxation,
and the resolving of conflicts concerning the ownership and use of the
land
• There are basically four components of Land Administration
1. Land Tenure( Ownership) : : it should be understood as a relationship between people
concerning land within any jurisdiction, so the mode in which rights to land is held
2. Land Use: : is mostly concerned with the development and use of the land. It includes land
development and use restrictions imposed through zoning mechanism and the designation of
areas of special interest, ranging from historic district to fragile ecosystems.
3. Land Value: it should be understood as all the values that could be assigned to land,
depending on the purpose of the value, the use of the land, and the method of
valuation
4. Land Information: which has considerably been developed over the last few decades,
with many efforts to establish information systems dealing with land information is
integral to all three components described above
 Describe the concepts of land tenure and, the bundle of rights and
responsibilities

• Land tenure is defined as a mode by which land rights are

held or owned, whether legally or customarily defined,
concerning the use of land and its product.
• Land tenure is an institution that rules designed by the
society to shape and regulate land rights.
• Rules of tenure clarify:
– Who can use what resources, for how long, and under
what conditions,
– How land rights allocated within societies to use, and
control; and
– Associated rights, responsibilities and restrictions (RRR) to
use and control of the land.
 Review different land tenure arrangements
• Land tenures constitute interests that include:
– Overriding sovereign interests: when a sovereign power (e.g., a nation
or community has the powers to allocate or reallocate land through
expropriation, etc.);
– Overlapping interests: when several parties allocated different rights
to the same parcel (e.g., one party may have lease rights, another
may have a right of way, etc.);
– Complementary interests: when different parties share the same
interest in the same parcel of land (e.g., members of a community
share common rights to grazing land, etc.);
– Competing interests: when different parties contest the same
interests in the same parcel (e.g., two parties claim for exclusive use
of a land parcel, often result in dispute.
 Cont……
• All of these can be reduced in to four idealistic property
rights systems, distinguished from one another as follows:
• Private: the assignment of rights to a private party who may
be an individual or a family, or a group of people, or a
corporate body such as a commercial entity;
• Communal: each member has use rights independently the
holdings of the community;
• Unrestricted/open access: specific rights are not assigned
to individuals but rather to a group;
• State: property rights assigned to some authority in the
public sector
 Review the central issues of land reform
programs
Importance of land tenure
• Support decision making in developing and implementing of land
management policies,
• Support land use planning, land development, and protection of
natural resources,
• Provide the ways to equitable access to land for different sects of
the community,
• Support for land reform, equity, and poverty alleviation
• Support for collateral arrangements and facilitate access to credit,
• Increase productivity of land as owners willing to invest,
• Reduce land transaction cost, land speculation, and land
grabbing,
• Provide order and stability by creating secure land tenure
 Objectives of land tenure
• Land tenure systems aim to ensure but not limited to
the following objectives:
• Ensure safe foundation for acquisition, enjoyment and
disposal of rights,
• Support land rights disputes arbitration through
formal enforcement.
• Clarify RRR (Rights, Responsibility and Restriction) on
land, and on other natural resources,
• Ensure certainty of the law and protect human rights.
 Major land tenure system
• There are two major land tenure System (Statutory tenure system
and Customary Land tenure system)
1. Statutory tenure system
• Statutory tenure systems, usually governed either by the common
law or by the civil law.
• There are two forms of statutory tenure systems: freehold and the
leasehold
– Freehold is the highest form of tenure that a citizen can hold
– It gives the most complete bundle of rights (i.e., nearly an
absolute ownership right to land) for free enjoyment of the land
parcel to the extent permitted by law for an indefinite duration.
– However, the State may acquire the land for public interest (e.g.,
to building new roads), and subjected to restrictive covenants,
legislation, and planning regulations imposed by the statute.
 Cont…..
• The other statutory land tenure system is a leasehold, usually
created through deed to use a land for a specified term
• A leasehold is less free compared to a freehold. Since the lessor
retains a long-term interest, at the end of the term, the owner
has a reversion expectant
2. Customary tenure system
• In Customary tenure systems, land is regarded as sacred and
mans̀ role is protect the interests of future generations.
• Allocation, use, and transfer determined by the community
leaders without payment, except for some form of token
amount, such as cattle, is often extracted as a sign of agreement
• In many cases, lands held under customary tenure are coming
under pressure from expanding rural populations or the growth
of urban areas
Principal forms of land tenure
• In broad terms, land tenure rights often classified as “formal” or “informal”,
• Formal tenure types are explicitly acknowledged by the state and
protected using legal means.
• Most often, formal property rights are titled and/or registered or recorded under
a state system.
• Informal tenure types (with varying degree of legality or illegality) lack
official recognition and protection.
• Informal tenure types include regularized and un-regularized squatting,
unauthorized subdivisions on legally owned land, and various forms of
unofficial rental arrangements.
• Squatting is an example of informal tenure type.
• In other cases, property rights may be “extra-legal” rights that not against
the law but not legally recognized.
 Tenure security and land rights
• Secure land tenure is not the same as land rights.
• Land rights refer to socially or legally recognized entitlements to access or occupy, use,
and control areas of land and related natural resources
• Whereas:
– The degree of confidence that land users will not be arbitrarily deprived
of the rights they enjoy over land and the economic benefits that flow
from it;
– The certainty that an individual’s rights to land recognized by others and
protected in case of specific challenge; or, more specifically,
– The right of individuals and groups to effective government
protection against forced evictions.
– The two major components of tenure security are:
• Reasonable duration of rights appropriate to use of land and the social
needs of land user, and
• Effective legal protection against eviction or arbitrary curtailment of land
rights, with enforceable guarantees and legal/social remedies against the
loss of these rights
 Cont…..
• Security of tenure also includes both ‘objective’ and
‘subjective’ elements.
• The ‘objective’ elements include the nature, content,
duration and enforceability of the rights, state
guarantee, quality of boundary descriptions, and
conflict handling mechanisms,
• Whereas the ‘subjective’ elements are the users’
perception of security of their rights
 Explain the basic concepts, principles and approaches
of land policy & reform
• The phrase land policy encompass to all policies that deal with land
(agricultural land, forest land, land for housing, infrastructure) etc..
• It typically includes law and regulation as well as administrative
structures and programs.
• Land policy generally aims at shaping a specific type of land governance
• A land policy is essentially an expression of governments perception of
the direction to be taken on major issues related to land
• There are different approaches for the base of land policy preparation
(Land as commodity: market-based approach & Land as a human right:
human rights-based approach)
• Land reform is a direct, publicly controlled change of the existing man-
land relationship (land tenure)
• The change normally attempts a diffusion of wealth, income or
productive capacity throughout the society
 Objective of Land Reform
– To correct historical inequities or inefficiencies;
– To withdrawal of tight state control over land and
establishment of individual or family property rights;
– To provide more secure rights for women and other
vulnerable groups using an approach based on pragmatism
rather than ideology, and
– Recognition/restitution of native or previous rights
 Principles Land Reform
• Consider Long Term Processes
• Promote Inter-Ministerial Work, With In-Depth Analysis Of Current Situations
• Promote A Participatory Approach To Policy Making
• Take Into Account the Distance Between Statutory Law And Local Practice
• Identify Key Principles and Allow for Diverse Solutions within them
• Carefully Craft the Rules and Tools
• Recognize that the Impact of Reform Depends on Changes in Practices and
Not on the Legal Texts Alone
• Ensure Widespread Dissemination of Information on the Scope and Content
of the Reform as Well as on the Policy, Legislation and Procedures
• Gender Issues Need a Careful Approach
• The Rights of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples are to be Adequately
Recognized
 Approach of Land Reform
• There are three alternative perspectives/approaches to
design and implement land reform policies.
• These approaches are:
– State-led (Political economy) Approach to land
reform : state-led land reforms argue that the solution to
the inequalities in the distribution of wealth would be
alleviated by direct intervention of state
– Market-Driven (Neo-liberal) Approach to Land
Reform: This approach centers itself on the workings of
market and profit maximization
– Actor Oriented Approach to Land Reform: is another
alternative as a remedy to the limitations of neo-liberal and
political economy approaches
 Elements of Land Reform
Land Redistribution
 It is a public policy that transfers property rights from large private
landholdings to small farmers and landless farm workers.
 It is aimed precisely at adjusting pre-existing social and production
relationships by transferring the effective control over land-based wealth
and power from the landed to the landless and near-landless classes
 It takes land from the State or from individual owners of large estates and
giving it to people who have no land
 Most commonly redistributive land reform is undertaken on land which
are :
◦ officially classified as ‘public/state’ properties,
◦ those area open for resettlement areas,
◦ lands that are generally not cultivated and inhabited, and
◦ Those which are without pre-existing private control.
◦ This type of land reform is most commonly practiced on public land.
 Cont…..
Land Restitution
• It a process that involves the restoration of land rights to previous owners;
• It is an equitable remedy under which a person is restored to his original position prior
to loss or injury, or placed in the position he or she would have been
• It is the process by which land and other property that was forcibly removed from its
owners is restored
• The main purpose of Land Restitution is:
– to achieve social justice
– to do with the need to make correction of the past, solve or rectify unfair
situations.
– And it is also concerned with the recognition of property rights of minorities such
as indigenous people
• Three commonly used instruments to correct social injustice:
– Restoration of land rights
– Compensation
– Reallocation of the same value of the lost property
 Cont…..
Land Consolidation
• Land consolidation has been undertaken for achieving wide range of rural development
objectives, ranging from agricultural improvement to village renewal and landscape
development and protection.
• Land consolidation is a process designed to improve land where the ownership has become
uneconomic due to the small size of the holdings.
• Policy makers often propose land consolidation programs as a solution to the costs
associated with land fragmentation.
• Land consolidation means that farmers surrender their scattered plots in order to receive an
equivalent area or value of land in fewer and more continuous plots.
• Approaches to land consolidation are
– Comprehensive land consolidation: includes the re-allocation of parcels together with a broad
range of other measures to promote rural development
– Simplified land consolidation: often combined with the rehabilitation of infrastructure and
sometimes the provision of minor facilities and do not include the construction of major
public works
– Voluntary group land consolidation: entirely voluntary, all participants must agree fully with the
proposed project
– Individual land consolidation: take place on an informal and sporadic basis and the state is not
directly involved
 LAND POLICY ISSUES IN ETHIOPIA

• Ethiopian Constitution asserts the right to ownership of rural and urban land, as
well as of all natural resource is exclusively vested to the state and people of
Ethiopia.
• Land is a common property of nation, nationalities and peoples of Ethiopia and
shall not be subject to sale or to other means of exchange (Art.40 (3));
• There are no absolute private property rights in land in Ethiopia.
• The justification of state ownership in Ethiopia is Social Justice and tenure
security
• The formulation of broad land policy in Ethiopia was rested to federal
government of Ethiopia.
 Urban Land in Ethiopia
• Today, in Ethiopia, lease is the “greatest importance ” and “exclusive” and-holding system
to transfer urban land to users in accordance with the master plans.
• Lease serves as a means to transfer state ownership of land to users, an alternative to
private ownership
• In proclamation No.721/2011, art.2(1) lease can be defined as “a system of land tenure by
which the right of urban land use is acquired under a definite period” of contract.
• Generally, the first and ultimate objective of any leasehold system are two:
– To supply land comparable to the amount demanded by the public; and
– To ensure good governance for the development of efficient land market and a
transparent and accountable land administration system.
• Specifically, the objective of the urban land lease are:
– To collect enough capital money to finance the urban housing and infrastructure
systems.
– To encourage private investors,
– To give market determined exchange value to land,
– To control the undesired expansion of cities,
– The private lessees can enjoy the assigned land rig
 Modes of Land Acquisition in Ethiopian Urban
Land
• For activities that have public advantage land may be transferred
by allotment (upon payment of the minimum lease price) Eg.
Gov.t offices, religious institution, gov.t housing programs,
diplomatic missions..(art.11)
• The proclamation provides different years of lease lives for
various activities (15-99 yrs) with fixed payment.
• After expiry, as matter of principle, contract is renewable
• But if the city administration needs the land for other purposes
then the contract shall be terminated
 Rural Land Administration
Overview of Ethiopian Rural Land Administration
• Every Ethiopian has the right to own private property (40.1)
• Private property is any thing which is created by the labour,
creativity, enterprise or capital of the individual (40.2)
• In this case land is not subject of private ownership and hence It is
the common property of the state and the people (40.3)
• Farmers and pastoralists will get land free of charge (40.4 & 5).
• Investors will get land upon payment (40.6)
• Government may expropriate land for public purpose and upon
payment of compensation (40.8)
 Access to Rural Land
• The proclamation (RLAUP) creates free access to rural land (art. 5.1. a.&.b)
• But there are requirements: –
– Residency (the person must reside in the area)
– Profession (the person must have a desire to engage in agri.)
– Age (the person must be above 18 years)
Nature and duration of land Rural right
• The type of right provided to peasants and pastoralists is known as “holding right.”
• Holding right is the right that includes
– Use right,
– lease,
– bequeath to family members (explained by law only) and other lawful heir, and
– to own the fruit (produce) thereof. (Art. 2.4)
• Holding right is secure because:
– Holding right is guaranteed by certificate (art.6)
– No distribution without consent (art.9.3)
– Compensation in the event of expropriation (7.3)
• The right is not limited by time (Art. 7.1) critics
 Modality of land acquisition
• There are three modalities of rural land acquisitions:
Land Grant
• Land may be granted to any person who fulfill the requirements.
– Source of the granted land is
• unoccupied gvt.al lands,
• communal lands,
• land reverted to the state (b/c no heir, abandoned, confiscated,) or
• conducting land redistribution
Land bequeath
• Land may be acquired from family by donation or inheritance to
family members.
• Family member is defined as “any person who permanently lives
with holder of holding right sharing the livelihood of the holder.
 Cont….
Land transferred to investors
• Based on art. 5.4.a government may transfer land to investors
“land grab”
• It signifies, large-scale agricultural land transfer on lease or sale
basis.
• Rural land holding may be transferred to others by way of rent
(farmer-farmer), lease (farmer-investor), donate, or inherit
• Farmers are able to lease or rent land from their holding “size
sufficient for the intended development in a manner that shall not
displace them, for a period of time to be determined by rural land
administration laws of regions” (art.8.1)
• Two restrictions exist in rural land lease by farmers :
– All the holding may not be rented out; and
– Transfer for only for definite period.