2. Land Policy
The Ethiopian Constitution asserts state ownership of land;
there are no private property rights in land.
Even if there are national debates on the existence of different
ownership and tenure regimes for land in Ethiopia, the
Government of Ethiopia is not prepared at this time to legalize
private property rights in land.
While the Government of Ethiopia has decentralized
administration of land to the regional governments, the
formulation of broad land policy still rests with the federal
government.
3. Federal government proclamations provide some land rights
guarantees and some requirements for regional councils, but
there is no national land policy and institution that might serve
as a coordinating body at the national level of government for
policy discussion and coordination of land administration.
The national law vests primary rights in the state with a
decentralized administration of land, yet the broader
discussion of property rights and policy options within the
context of current constitutional provisions is sufficient.
While the State still maintains primary rights in property, it
could move toward a system of long-term leases that vest
strong secondary rights in landholders, allowing them to
sublease or make other land transactions (e.g., mortgages).
4. These long-term leases would help to address some of the
weaknesses in the existing land tenure system.
The federal government needs to address the land question.
The proposed ministry reorganization anticipates the
establishment of a department of land administration.
However, land issues in the broadest context will still extend
beyond the scope of the new Ministry.
There is a need to establish a task force within the Prime
Minister’s office to aid in the development of the national land
policy and monitor its implementation.
5. Land Administration and Land Management
There is no federal institution responsible for land
administration to support and coordinate regional efforts.
At the regional level, institutional structures vary with the four
regionals governments visited.
Each has adopted a different approach to land administration
institutional structures.
In several regions those governments have launched land
administration reform efforts
6. The objective of these efforts is to improve land administration and
thereby improve land tenure security for land users, though it is unclear
how effective that will be in isolation of other interventions.
Some user rights are transferable in the form of sharecropping,
subleasing, or rental arrangements, but there are some restrictions in
terms of the lease periods and the amounts of land to be leased out.
Current land use and land administration policies of the regions present
restrictions on the transferability and use of land.
Land redistribution is not ruled out in both the federal land
proclamation and some regional proclamations and theoretically can
still take place.
There are also reports or statements by the kebele administrations
(groups of villages that form administrative units in Ethiopia) regarding
the possible redistribution of land even if they have certificates.
7. This suggests that even with the certificates, farmers do not have
strong tenure security.
Regional proclamations have stated land use rights for
landholders, farmers, and others can still be taken away by the
regional government or the local kebele administrations.
In these cases, land users who have land taken by the government
(as opposed to those who abandon it) are supposed to be paid
compensation. However, the entire expropriation process is not
articulated in these proclamations.
Kebele administration authorities in some regions stated that if
someone “left” their land for a period of more than two years,
regardless if they held a certificate, they would take the land and
distribute it to someone else.
Use rights are inheritable within families. However, there are
some restrictions in the Amhara law.
8. The programs from region to region lack consistency, including in
the way land is administered and the user rights that are granted.
The most notable inconsistencies are in their organizational
structures, inheritance, and in the provisions permitting
subleases.
Regional and lower-level governments do not have the capacity to
adequately implement their land administration reform programs.
It appears that regional governments have not adequately thought
through monitoring and evaluation of the impacts of their reform
efforts.
There is little capacity for the dissemination of information to the
public about the various land administration reform programs,
their impacts, objectives, and ways that they will impact local
resource use.
9. Land Certification
The present effort to improve land administration and security of tenure
includes a focus on land certification, where the regional government
will issue land certificates to individual farmers.
Current land administration reform programs appear to have a
technological focus rather than a focus on clarification of property
rights.
Even with the certificates, land users may lose rights to use land under
certain circumstances.
There is a “rush” to grant certificates in some regions without clearly
mapping out certain strategies.
One strategy should link land administration reform and improved
security with economic investment, sound resource use, poverty
reduction, and improved livelihoods.
Another strategy should insure that farmers and other land users
understand the process, their rights and obligations, and the
opportunities and constraints.
10. Regional governments have not adequately thought through the
sustainability of their land certification and land record efforts.
In the primary certification phase in Amhara region, the kebele
boundaries and those of all non-individually held land (e.g.,
communal land, reserves, or service areas) are to be measured
using modern survey equipment and techniques.
Based on that survey, baseline individual landholdings are still
recorded using traditional measurement methods.
While a full shift to modern techniques may be required in the
future, such a shift at this point would possibly be premature due
to limited regional and local capacity and resources, as well as
the need to ensure that land users first fully understand the
reform process.
11. Land Administration in Ethiopia: Lessons, Paradoxes, and
Challenges Ahead
LESSONS:
Cheap, large-scale, participatory, and successful land
certification is feasible, with proven positive results, economic
and social
Ground-level economic actors trust the rural certification
system, despite multiple legal uncertainties
PARADOXES:
Rural land administration appears to be more effective than
urban
12. CHALLENGES:
A disconnect between urban and rural land (land rights;
regulatory systems; policies; institutional settings; land
administration practices)
Elements of land administration that are too complex and
expensive for the country
Policies that still are not supportive of economic mobility
Respective roles of the central government and regional
governments
Finding an optimum role for land administration agencies at
each level of government
14. Separate and uncoordinated lines of laws and regulations on
urban and rural land
Property rights different for urban and rural tenants
No mechanism for conversion of rural land rights to urban
Expropriation “by default” from rural tenants in areas covered
by Master Plans
Government does not benefit from this expropriation: it costs
more than it generates in revenues
15. Overcoming the disconnect:
Introduce the mechanism for the land rights conversion
Reduce expropriation to the unavoidable minimum
Build future land policies on a unified (urban-and-rural)
platform
Designing policies and next steps based on
unbiased research of the realities on the ground and
and the costs and feasibility of implementation
17. 6.1.INTRODUCTION : LAND TENURE
REGIMES
Land tenure regimes in Ethiopia are divided into three
periods:
1.The imperial regime before 1974: prerevolutionary
period)
2.The derg regime between 1974-91
3.The current regime (after the fall of the derg since
1991)
18. LAND TENURE SYSTEM BEFORE 1974
Land tenure before 19974 was one of the most
complex systems in the world
It was feudalistic type of man-land relationships
There were different types of land tenure. The most
commonly recognized tenure types were
Rist/kinship or communal/,
Gult( grant land),
Gebbar tenures (sometimes referred to as private),
Samon (church), and
Maderia or mengist (state) tenure types.
19. RIST /KINSHIP OR COMMUNAL
It was a kind of communal ownership system based on
descent that granted usufruct rights
All male and female descendants of an individual
founder or occupier were entitled to a share of land.
Most prevalent in the northern part of the country.
There was a regular redistribution of rights to the
descendants
Rist holders usually lacked the right to transfer/sell
their share outside the family, mortgage, bequeath or
transfer it as a gift as the land belonged to the
descent group, not the individual.
20. GULT AND RIST GULT
• Gult system was a type of fief right that required the peasants to pay
tribute and taxes in cash, kind, or labor to landlords
• In the northern part of Ethiopia, these gult holders were largely an
aristocratic group,
• Whereas in the southern part, it was civil and military servants of
the imperial regime who had received gult rights as compensation
for their services.
• Gult rights were not necessarily inheritable and the right could be
withdrawn by the crown at any time
• In the south, there was also the granting of heritable rist gult rights,
especially to the royal family
21. GEBBAR
It was tenure after the 1941 tax reform
Tax reform in 1941 defined the land for which tax had
been paid to the government as the property of the
taxpayer.
Before the tax reform, the term gebbar - characterized
“tribute-paying peasants” who were controlled by gult
lords or local elites (balabbat), and suffered from
burdensome tributes and services to be delivered to
these authorities.
As a consequence, taxpaying gebbars became the legal
owners of their land and this reform has led to the
emergence of private property
The farmers therefore were no longer required to pay
tribute to the local overlords, but directly to the
representatives of the Ethiopian crown.
22. 6.3. LAND TENURE DURING THE DERG
REGIME (1974-1991)
The 1975 land reform by Derg has abolished
tenant - landlord relationships in Ethiopia and
considered by many as radical measure
The derg justified the land reform program on
two principles:
Historical justice – to overcome the exploitative character of imperial
agrarian relations; and
Justice as egalitarianism – providing each farm family with equal
access to cultivation land according to their needs.
23. The basic contents of the reform Proc. no.
31/1975 were:
Nationalization of all land, all land under public/state ownership; No
private ownership
Prohibition of transfer of use rights by sale, exchange, succession,
mortgage or lease;
The power of administering land was vested in the Ministry of Land
Reform and Administration through Peasant Associations at the
grassroots level;
The maximum limit of land that one can possess was to be ten hectares;
No able adult person was allowed to use hired labor to cultivate his
holdings
24. 6.4. THE CURRENT LAND TENURE
• Land belongs to the state and the peoples of Ethiopia(Article 40)
• Justifications by the state:
– The government’s position builds on a social equity and tenure
security considerations, based on principle of fairness
– It is means to protect the rural peasantry from the negative side
effects of market forces.
– State ownership prevents the accumulation and concentration of land
in the hands of a small number of urban and bourgeois
– It also claims that private ownership of land may lead to:
–subsequent peasant eviction and poverty;
–the resurgence of exploitative tenancy institutions,
and
–Undesirable rural-urban migration .
25. 6.4.2. CRITICS OF STATE
OWNERSHIP
• Most scholars argued that state ownership of
land yields negative effects on land
productivity and therefore produces lower
efficiency levels than would be achievable with
the working of a private land market.
• Those in favor of private property rights assert
that state ownership provides barriers to full-
scale efficiency
26. CONT…
• State ownership is criticized by the following
specific issues:
–It prevents the emergence of a dynamic rural land market
–It leads subsequent fragmentation of land and
overpopulation in the rural areas and resource degradation,
–It perpetuates the legacies of the derg regime’s
redistribution programmes that are creating tenure
insecurity and discouraging land owners from investing in
sustainable resource use.
