Search Projects

Context

The Ivory Coast is the largest cocoa producer in the world, and about 10% of GDP and 15% of government revenues are generated in this sector. However, as of July 2017, only 0.5% of the total agricultural land had a land certificate. At the same time, due to population growth the pressure on land increases. With a change of the forest law in 2015, the owners of land are also the owners of the trees planted on it. However, current land use contracts often remain informal and unclear.

Burundi has the world’s highest hunger score and around 45 percent of the population is affected by food insecurity. The country copes with increasing scarcity of land as a result of increasing population size, returnees and IDPs and climate change. With the majority of Burundians depending on agriculture for their food and livelihoods, land scarcity makes this reliance on agriculture precarious. This pressure on land causes elevated levels of land disputes with over 55% of all court cases being related to conflicts over land.

Somalia has over 2.9 million Internally Displaced People (IDPs) following decades of civil war and violent conflict. In addition, a significant increase of droughts and floods due to climate change have forced people away from their rural homes. Most IDPs have relocated in Somalia’s cities which has resulted in rapid urbanization, unplanned city development, and a speculation in land markets. This situation has spurred continuous displacements and forced evictions of IDPs, preventing them from building a sustainable livelihood.

The Sudan Rural Land and Governance (SRLG) project is a follow-on project to the Sudan Property Rights Program (SPRP), which assisted the Government of Southern Sudan (GOSS) to develop a draft land policy based on extensive public consultation and research, as well as provided support to build the capacity of the South Sudan Land Commission (SSLC).

This program aimed to address key causes of conflict and engage communities to achieve peace and reconciliation in Kaabong District, Karamoja, where cattle raiding, contested access to natural resources, small arms proliferation, and weak state institutions are among the drivers of conflict. The program strengthened local and district mechanisms for conflict mitigation, encouraged ongoing dialogue and joint monitoring and strengthened livelihoods.

The project worked to prevent, manage, and help resolve ongoing land conflicts and conflicts created through the land registration project, thereby maintaining micro- and macro-level peace and security and promoting reconciliation during the potentially destabilizing activities resulting from the implementation of the land law; to provide training for land conflict resolution; and to help the GoR implement land rights registration under its land reform program through participatory processes.

USAID/Burundi’s Policy Reform Program aimed to strengthen relations between the government, civil society, and the media in order to promote dialogue and foster a transparent and participatory land policy formulation process. Through its trainings in conflict management, anti-corruption and advocacy, the project built the capacity of government, civil society, and media to understand and discuss policy matters in an informed and inclusive manner.

USAID’s Economic Prosperity Initiative (EPI) supported a working group to develop the Land Registration Strategy and Action Plan. The draft strategy addresses the need to establish policies that deal effectively with all types of owners who received land as part of the original land privatization process. The action plan defines the program governance structure, sets the implementation timeline and phases, identifies necessary human and technical resources and outlines the overall budget (about $34 million) to complete the land reform/registration.

Kenya’s National Accord and Reconciliation Act of 2008 provided a framework for ending the cycle of political violence that erupted again after the 2007 elections and sought to address the causes of the crisis with a schedule of political and development reforms. Although USAID’s Office of Transition Iniaitives’ work in Kenya has touched on all the Agenda items, work through the Kenya Transition Initiative (KTI) aligned the most with the political and societal reforms outlined in Agenda Item 4, which involved addressing long-term issues.

National Accord Agenda Items:

The Kyrgyzstan Land Policy Reform Project (KLPRP) was developed primarily to address problems related to realization of land rights, weakly functioning land markets, and unstable land use management. This project works at the national and local levels to inform local people about their land rights.