Fit-for-purpose land administration: lessons from urban and rural Ethiopia

Lessons for designing fit-for-purpose land administration and land management activities, where the stated purposes are poverty alleviation, food security, and good governance, are provided. Contemporary developments from urban and rural Ethiopia provide the empirical basis: data is synthesised from fieldwork and other research activities undertaken between 2011 and 2013. With its large population and important geopolitical location, Ethiopia will continue to act as a yardstick for measuring the success of the global development agenda, particularly in Eastern Africa. Observations from training sessions conducted with cadastral and urban planning experts in Addis Ababa reveal challenges and opportunities regarding capacity development for urban land administration, urban land markets, and state land management. From the city of Bahir Dar, an alternative perspective of urban land administration is provided: the presented results shed light on the varying quality of cadastral development, but also the positive and negative impacts of cadastral implementation. Meanwhile, results from Dilla Town reveal the opportunity to link cadastral development to other infrastructure development activities (e.g. road construction and upgrade). The case also reveals the ongoing tension between ensuring adequate compensation payments relating to land acquisition, whilst also delivering a broader community benefit. Outputs from exploratory design work on the potential for land consolidation in the Amhara region are also articulated. The status of cadastral development in rural areas is revealed, along with future challenges for using cadastral data in land consolidation activities. Overall, the synthesised studies expose how fit-for-purpose ideologies are increasingly informing Ethiopian cadastral design, and under what conditions these designs can support poverty alleviation, food security, and good governance

its4land - Challenges and opportunities in developing innovative geospatial tools for fit-for-purpose land rights mapping

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Its4land - Innovative Geospatial Tools for Fit-for-Purpose Land Rights Mapping

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Towards innovative geospatial tools for fit-for-purpose land rights mapping

© Authors 2017. CC BY 4.0 License. In large parts of sub Saharan Africa it remains an ongoing challenging to map millions of unrecognized land rights. Existing approaches for recognizing these rights have proven inappropriate in many cases. A new generation of tools needs to be developed to support faster, cheaper, easier, and more responsible land rights mapping. This is the main goal of its4land, an European Commission Horizon 2020 project that aims to develop innovative tools inspired by the continuum of land rights, fit-for-purpose land administration, and cadastral intelligence. its4land is using strategic collaboration between the EU and East Africa to deliver innovative, scalable, and transferrable ICT solutions. The innovation process incorporates a broad range of stakeholders and emergent geospatial technologies, including smart sketchmaps, UAVs, automated feature extraction, as well as geocloud services. The aim is to combine innovative technologies, capture the specific needs, market opportunities and readiness of end-users in the domain of land tenure information recording in Eastern Africa. The project consists of a four year work plan, €3.9M funding, and eight consortium partners collaborating with stakeholders from six case study locations in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Rwanda. The major tasks include tool development, prototyping, and demonstration for local, national, regional, and international interest groups. The case locations cover different land uses such as: urban, peri-urban, rural smallholder, and (former) pastoralist. This paper describes the project's activities within the first 18 months and covers barriers discovered, lessons learned and results achieved.status: publishe