LGAF: The Land Governance Wrap Up

After an extended process of conceptualising, developing, and pilot testing, the Land Governance Assessment Framework (LGAF) in collaboration with the World Bank, is now being rolled out in Benin, Rwanda and Mozambique. A final Economic Sector Work report on LGAF will also be published in the near future by the World Bank.

It has been an exciting 6 months for LEI with our strategy to target new projects in Africa starting to come to fruition. We have had two recent project wins in Lesotho being awarded an MCA contract for a Systematic Land Regularisation and Land Allocation Project in July 2009 and being formally notified of our success in bidding for a second project, Modernisation of Land Services and Institutional Strengthening, in August 2009.

LEI have been managing the Land Administration and Management Project (LAMP) for AusAID in the Philippines since 2001. The project has focused on institutional reform, policy development, improving tenure security through land registration, and introducing valuation reform.

As LEI’s successful and committed team of national and international staff close project operations of Phase 2 on the Lao Land Titling Project we reflect on the impact of over 15 years of donor assistance.

Hello, my name is Mark Williams. For those that don’t know me I am the latest in a long line of Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development (AYAD) volunteering on the Lao Land Titling Project II. I am a GIS/IT Officer and within my 8 months here in Laos, have been working on a variety of projects with a range of organisations. These include the analysis of Land Use change over 10 years within Vientiane for a GTZ funded research project, conduct training on quality checking the digital cadastre as well as training the trainers at the Polytechnic College in GIS so they will be able to teach it as part of a module within their new Land Administration Degree.

This short article is written to raise awareness of the ever present theme of gender and the making of inroads towards positive social development by Kate Dalrymple. After a pleasing response to the Laos Community Education and Gender Lessons presentation made at the Knowledge Sharing Workshop, I’m following up with some general discussion for practitioners in our industry to consider. Conveniently, this coincides with the Global Land Tools Network (www.gltn.net) forum discussion on gender responsive land tools (Sept 8 – Oct 15, 2008) which I encourage you all to visit.

LEI has had some good news over the last quarter with AusAID advising of their intention to extend the contract for two years to complete the 5 year commitment of development assistance to LAMPII. This will see LAMP II continue till January 2011. Over the past few months there has been significant progress in the valuation and Innovation Support Fund components of LAMP II as well as good movement on all four reform Bills in the Congress especially the RESA valuation professionalization Bill and the Free Patent Amendment to the Public Land Act. Speaker of the House, Hon. Prospero Nograles at the opening of the second regular session on 28 July stated that the Free Patent Bill is being fast tracked “to convert more of our land resources to productive capital”. The amendments would allow urban lands to be titled at low cost and suitable for mass titling. A major policy proposal for a revision of the land related taxes was completed and the Department of Finance created a inter office committee to study the report and make recommendations.

Since our last newsletter, AusAID has approved the restructure of the technical assistance team, which will see all our national adviser positions extended up to the official end of AusAID’s Phase 2, in November 2008. It also permits some additional international cadastral inputs, to help the TA team to finalise its capacity-building program. AusAID has also approved the proposal for an extension of technical assistance to June 2009, to correspond with the official end of the World Bank Phase 2. This will permit in additional infusion of TA resources to help NLMA and the Department of Lands continue the expansion of land titling into the final three provinces and to plan for the expanded use of computer applications in systematic adjudication teams and land offices. In this regard, a significant recent development is the establishment of a Land Records Management Technical Working Group, which will review the 10- year computerisation plan and ensure a rational computerisation strategy across the departments of NLMA.

LEI is supporting the US company ARD in implementing a USAID-funded project aimed at addressing property rights and land tenure issues in Timor Leste. Land tenure has experienced a rather tenuous history in Timor-Leste. Formerly known as East Timor, the country was occupied as a colony of Portugal for some 450 years, experienced three years of Japanese occupation during WW2, some twenty five years of Indonesian occupation following its first attempts at independence late 1975, through to formal acceptance of independence in May 2002. During each of these occupations, some property rights were granted. However, since independence, no property rights have been issued and no former rights are recognised, as no land law under the new Government yet exist.

For the last two and a half years I have been based in Leyte with the LAMP2 operations as the International Adviser for Systematic Adjudication. Over these years there has been some tremendous achievements made.