From fragmentation to future: empowering communities, transforming agriculture improving governance in Ethiopia

Context

In Ethiopia, rural households usually manage various spatially separated tiny land parcels with an average size of between 0.15 and 0.5 hectares. Cultivating fragmented land parcels is highly inefficient and involves additional transportation and labour costs. Moreover, fragmented landholding hinders mechanisation, negatively affecting productivity and agricultural development.

Acknowledging these challenges, Ethiopia’s Agricultural and Rural Development policy identifies land consolidation as a key land management tool to tackle land fragmentation. Ongoing efforts aim to improve land administration systems, ensuring tenure security and promoting equitable access to land for women and vulnerable groups. This necessitates enhancing the legal and institutional frameworks and capacity building on multiple levels to enable the design, implementation and monitoring measures to tackle land fragmentation.

Objective

Land consolidation is being established as a key land management tool that enables a functional land administration system in Ethiopia.

Approach

In collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), Amhara Bureau of Land (BoL), and Sidama Land Administrations and Use Directorate (LAUD), the project tackles land fragmentation through targeted measures by:

• Using insights from land consolidation pilot schemes, local knowledge, and socio-economic factors to inform policymaking and develop a climate and gender-sensitive land consolidation strategy.
• Anchoring climate-sensitive land governance in agriculture and improving agricultural services and conditions through small scale infrastructure measures such as constructing drainage and irrigation systems.
• Establishing alternative livelihood for smallholder farmers by creating market linkage and to existing agricultural service.
• Formulating policies and directives to regulate measures against land fragmentation and improve rural land administration process.

Last update: February 2024