International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Ethiopian Development Research Institute (EDRI). Conference on "Towards what works in Rural Development in Ethiopia: Evidence on the Impact of Investments and Policies". December 13, 2013. Hilton Hotel, Addis Ababa.

1. Impacts of Rural Land Certification in
Ethiopia: Empirical evidences from the
Northern Highlands of Ethiopia
Hosaena Ghebru (Ph.D)
Presented at a Seminar “Towards what works in rural development
in Ethiopia: Evidence on the impact of investments and policies”
December 13th, 2013
Hilton Hotel, Addis Ababa

2. Introduction
• New land reforms high on the development agenda:
• (High Level) Commission on Legal
Empowerment of the Poor - LPI
• USAID, The World Bank, DFID (scaled
up financing of land reform projects)
• Land governance – integral component of
the G-8 alliance for food security
• MDGs: Rights based approaches
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3. Land reform approaches: old and new
• Classical land titling reform: Formalizing private property rights to land
• Surveying and titling upon demand
• High tech and high cost approach
• Land redistribution policies and projects
• Revolutionary reforms of the past (Eg. Ethiopia)
• Regular redistributions to maintain an egalitarian land distribution
(China, Ethiopia, Eritrea)
• ”Market-assisted” redistributions in countries with inequitable land
distributions (e.g. Brazil, Bolivia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malawi, The
Philippines)
• Formalization of customary land rights
• Demarcation of village borders and village land use planning
• Issuing of customary land certificates
• Legal recognition of customary land rights
• Low-cost land registration and certification
• Broad-based, large-scale implementation with strong local participation
• Low-cost technology approach
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4. Mixed stories: failed reforms
• Land titling in Kenya and Madagascar
• Have not enhanced tenure security, promoted investment,
land and credit markets (e.g. Place and Migot-Adholla
1998, Jacoby and Minten 2006,2008)
• Land distributions remain extremely skewed after
many years with land redistribution reforms in LatinAmerican countries, South Africa, Zimbabwe, …
• Sucessful reforms:
• Ethiopia: Low-cost land registration and certification
• China: Household responsibility system
• India: Computerized registry system, tax-base
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5. The three neoclassical focal points of
land reform
• Tenure security
• Enhance investment
• Transferability
• Gains from trade
• Reallocate land to more efficient users
• Credit access
• Land as collateral
How important are each of these and are they always
achievable?
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6. Conceptual model 1
Links between Tenure Security and Food Security:
Evidence from Ethiopia
Sources and effects of tenure insecurity
Rights
Unclear
borders
Encroachment
Conflicts
Expropriation
Redistribution
Sources
of risk
User
rights
-
Limited
investment
Mortgaging
rights
Limited
access to
credit
Private
State
Tenure
insecurity
of owners
-
-
Transfer
rights
Production
inefficiency
Limited
land
transfers
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7. Conceptual model 2
Unclear
borders
Encroachment
Conflicts
Rights
Sources
of risk
Investment
Mortgaging
rights
+
User
rights
Access to
credit
+
Private
+
Low-cost land
registration and
certification
-
Tenure
security of
owners
+
State
Expropriation
Redistribution
Transfer
rights
Land
transfers
Production
efficiency
+
+
Food
security
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8. Land certification in Ethiopia
• Certification: Individual households are given user rights
•
•
•
•
•
•
Includes rights to use, bequeath, inherit, rent out, invest
No right to sell or mortgage
Responsibility for land conservation
Restrictions on migration and on duration of rental contracts
Restriction that maximum 50% of holding can be rented out
Obligation to use the land
• Land certification started first in Tigray Region in 1998
• Land certification started in 2003-2005 in three other
regions (Amhara, Oromiya, and SNNP regions) of the
country
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9. Background, continued
• Land Registration and Certification 1998-99
Links between Tenure Security and Food Security:
Evidence from Ethiopia
• Highly participatory and low cost approach
• Granted user rights to land into perpetuity
• New Land Law Reforms in Tigray 2006-2010
• Established local Land Administration Committees
and Land Courts
• Restriction on land rental at 50% of farm size
• Confiscation of land from households who have been
away for more than two years with access to off-farm
income sources
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10. Empirical evidence: Land certification in
Ethiopia
Links between Tenure Security and Food Security:
Evidence from Ethiopia
1. Land investments and productivity
i. Holden, Deininger and Ghebru (AJAE, 2009)
ii. Deininger, Ali, Holden and Zevenbergen (WD, 2008)
iii. Alemu, Holden, Ghebru and Kassie (book chapter, 2013)
iv. Deininger, Ali and Alemu (LE, 2011)
2. Impacts on land conflicts
i. Holden, Deininger and Ghebru (2010)
3. Impacts on land rental market participation
i. Holden, Deininger and Ghebru (JDS, 2011)
ii. Deininger, Ali and Alemu (LE, 2011)
4. Welfare impacts
i.
Holden and Ghebru (2011) ... (book chapter, 2013)
ii. Food security: IFPRI working paper (2013)
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11. Data in Tigray Region
• Household panel data survey
• Stratified random sample of 400 households in
16 communities
• Stratification based on population density,
market access and agroclimatic variation (subsample of an IFPRI community level survey)
• Surveyed in 1998, 2001, 2003 and 2006
• Household and farm plot level data
• Use households for which we have complete
data (balanced panel)
• Survey of 400 local conflict mediators in
27 communities (85 villages)
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12. Tenure Insecurity, Gender,
Low-cost Land Certification, and Land
Rental Market Participation
By
Stein Holden, Klaus Deininger and Hosaena Ghebru

13. Gender and Market Participation: Key
Hypotheses
• H1. Female-headed households are more likely to rent
out land and rent out more land than male-headed
households (due to their poverty in non-tradable non-land
resources) vs.
• H2. Female-headed households rent out less land than
male-headed households because they are more tenure
insecure.
• H3. Landlords that received certificates rent out more
land after the reform (due to increased tenure security).
• H4. Female landlords that received land certificates rent
out more land as a response to getting land certificates
compared to male landlords that received land
certificates (because they initially were more tenure
insecure and land certificates increased their tenure
security relatively more).
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14. Findings
• Significant and positive effect of land certification
on the amount of activity in the land rental
market
• Potential landlords have become more willing to rent
out their land, especially female-headed households
• Female-headed households with land certificates
rented out significantly more land
• Easier for (potential) tenants to access land to rent in
• Significant transaction costs in the land rental
market also after the certification
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15. Impacts of Low-cost Land
Certification on Investment and
Productivity
By
Stein Holden, Klaus Deininger and Hosaena Ghebru

16. Investments, Management and
Productivity of Land: Hypotheses
• H1: Having a certificate for a farm plot enhances
investments on the plot in form of building of new
structures, improvement/ maintenance of existing
conservation structures and planting of trees
• H2: Restrictions on tree planting in the land
proclamations (especially on eucalyptus) have
prevented investment in trees. Therefore, land
certification has not stimulated this type of investment
and there will be no difference between plots with and
without certificates
• H3:Land certification has enhanced land productivity
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17. Findings
• Land certification has contributed to
• Increased investment in trees
• Better management of soil conservation structures
• Higher land productivity
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18. .3
.2
0
.1
Density
.4
.5
Yield distribution, plots with and
without land certificate
0
2
4
6
8
logtotvalha
Certificate
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No certificate
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19. Links between
Tenure Security and Food Security:
Can land registration and certification enhance food
security
Hosaena Ghebru and Stein Holden

20. Objectives
• To analyze the link between tenure security
enhanced by land registration and certification
and household food security
• Hypotheses:
• H-a: Land certification has enhanced food security in form of
calorie availability for households.
• H-b: Land certification has in particular enhanced the calorie
availability through strengthened use rights and investments
• H-c: Land certification has enhanced calorie availability through
enhanced participation in land rental markets
• H-d: Land certification has in particular enhanced the calorie
availability of female-headed households
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21. Key Conclusions
• Land registration and certification has enhanced tenure
security in our study area (northern Ethiopia)
• Food availability has been enhanced via increased
investment and land productivity on owner-operated
land
• Food availability has been enhanced through increased
access to land through the land rental market for tenant
households
• Implications:
• Recent restrictive land law reforms may reduce the tenure
security and land rental market effects of land certification
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22. 0
.0002 .0004 .0006 .0008
(A) Calorie supply comparison - 1997/98
1800 Kcal
daily_calorie_intake2
female headed HHs 1998
(C) Calorie supply comparison - 2009/10
.0004
0
.0002
Density
male headed HHs 1998
kernel = epanechnikov, bandwidth = 172.0371
.0006
Links between Tenure Security and Food Security:
Evidence from Ethiopia
Density
Calorie availability of male- and femaleheaded households in 1997-98 and 2009-10
1800 Kcal
daily_calorie_intake2
female headed HHs 2010
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kernel = epanechnikov, bandwidth = 273.3059
male headed HHs 2010
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23. Can land registration and
certification reduce land
border conflicts?
By
Stein Holden, Klaus Deininger and Hosaena Ghebru

24. Main findings
• The land reform in Tigray has contributed to a
reduction in land border disputes
• Better market access is associated with less conflicts
• Variation in quality of the reform was reflected in the
frequency of conflicts: Better quality -> Less conflicts
– Quality of land demarcation and measurement
– Involvement of local elders enhanced timely conflict
resolution
• Many land border conflicts near district centers
remain unresolved
– Expansion of urban centers into rural areas has not been
addressed well by the reform
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25. Successful land reform in Ethiopia
• Land certificates have been provided to more than 6 million
households and for more than 20 million plots of land within a
period of 8 years
• Land certification has in Tigray enhanced
• Tenure security, especially of women
• Land rental market participation
• Land investments
• Land productivity
• Reduced land conflicts
• Reduced poverty, especially of female headed households
(Ghebru and Holden 2008, 2013; Holden et al. 2008a, 2008b, 2011,
Deininger et al. 2008, Holden and Tefera 2008,). The studies can be
obtained from author upon request.
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26. Why has the Ethiopian land reform
been so successful, despite ...?
•
•
•
•
It has not provided full private property rights to land
It has not opened for sales markets for land
It has not opened for mortgaging of land
It has not used advanced technology or highly skilled
technical staff during implementation (except in pilot
areas)
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27. Conclusion: Wider perspective
Why the Ethiopian reform with more restricted rights
has been successful while land titling programs in
Kenya and Madagascar did not have similar effects:
• Collateral effect unimportant in all cases
• Initial tenure insecurity higher in Ethiopia – created
a demand for certificates
• Low cost and rapid implementation through a
participatory and transparent process
• Local administrative capacity and motivation
• No local elite was threatened by the reform
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28. What next for the land governance sector in
Ethiopia?
• Institutional/administrative issues
• Incidences of 2nd generation land ownership together
with lack of updates in the land registery system 
potential ownership (inheritance-related disputes)
• Policy/regulatory issues
• More restrictive land use policies  concealed land
contracts  inefficiency in the land rental market 
incidences of contractual-related disputes
• 1st stage land certification  2nd stage land
certification (?)  more depth of rights
• Rural population pressure and increasing landlessness 
incidences of parcel border disputes  demand for 2nd stage
certification
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29. What next for the land governance sector in
Ethiopia: on-going studies by ESSP
• Administrative reforms
• How does the local adminstrative capacity coping with
the increasing pressure on land? Land registery books
or computers or both?
• Policy/regulatory reforms
• How do the recent restrictive land policies and
regulations affect spatial and economic mobility of farm
households and its implications on the boader agenda
of agricultural transformation in the country
• 1st stage land certification  2nd stage land
certification (?)  more depth of rights
• What is the demand for a more formalized land rights and the 2nd
stage land certification in Ethiopia
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30. Thank you!
Links between Tenure Security and Food Security:
Evidence from Ethiopia
a
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