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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.

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).

While still one of the poorest countries in the world, Ethiopia has made many advances in reducing the level of poverty and increasing agricultural production. The pace of these advances however, is constrained by inefficiencies in the rural land sector and weak documentation and management of land rights.

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.

The Ghana Commercial Agriculture Project (GCAP), which is supported by USAID and the World Bank, has four components: (1) Strengthening investment promotion infrastructure, facilitating secure access to land.

The Land Governance Support Activity (LGSA) supports the establishment of more effective land governance systems, ready to implement comprehensive reforms to improve equitable access to land and security of tenure, so as to facilitate inclusive sustained growth and development, ensure peace and security, and provide sustainable management of the environment.

Achieving long-term food security while protecting biodiversity and other ecosystem services will require: sustainable intensification of production on existing lands, restoration of degraded lands, and converting to agriculture only those lands where potential production is high, while degradation risk is low. To meet these requirements, knowledge and information about how land potential varies at field to regional scales is needed.

Under the Evaluation, Research and Communications (ERC) project, USAID is collaborating with the private sector to road-test investment guidance such as the New Alliance’s Analytical Framework for Responsible Land-Based Investments in African Agriculture. The Responsible Land-Based Investment Pilot supports the efforts of several investors to improve corporate due diligence processes, community consultation and grievance mechanisms while enhancing food security, environmental protection and human rights protections.

The USAID ProParque team is helping Honduras develop sound management of its natural resources in a way that complements the country’s economic and social development. The project works with the Government of Honduras to strengthen the nation’s protected area management system, improve biodiversity and natural resource management, and facilitate rural enterprise growth, climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction, land tenure, and clean energy development.

The Tanzania SERA project assists both the Government of the Republic of Tanzania (GoT) and the private sector to enable a broad‐based, sustainable transformation of the agricultural sector through policy reform. The vision for this project is twofold: to improve the policy and regulatory environment for agriculture growth and to build a group of public sector institutions, advocacy organizations, and individuals capable of performing rigorous policy analysis and advocating for policy reform.