Comments on Africa presentation on key challenges Harold Liversage, Land Tenure Adviser, IFAD h.liversage@ifad.org

1. Comments on Africa presentation on key challengesHarold Liversage, Land Tenure Adviser, IFADh.liversage@ifad.org Some key issues raised: • Need for better recognition of customary and informal rights. • Huge diversity in customary systems – with different recognitions of the balance of group and individual rights. • Means a recognition of overlapping and secondary rights. • Diversity across regions and within countries – has implications for land policies and their implementation. • Not just diversity in customary – also statutory (anglophone, francophone and lusophone). • What does greater recognition of customary and informal mean? Integration of customary into statutory or statutory into customary? Okoth-Ogendo argues that (i) while the state is the biggest owner of land, little land is registered under statutory systems; (ii) the central state is the largest land grabber. • Important that locally based customary systems act as a check to central state administration and vice versa.

2. Decentralisation is important. • Local government (districts, communes) are the meeting point between statutory and customary land administration systems. • Do not underestimate the capacity requirements for new approaches. Local land officers are expected to be multi-disciplinary, with surveying, legal and facilitation skills. • Reinvesting revenue generated from land administration into these systems is essential. • While new technologies provide new opportunities, there are risks: (i) their introduction can sometimes be resisted by local officials and (ii) can result in more efficient dispossession of land of customary and informal rights holders. • Scaling up of pilot experience is a key challenge. • Systematic processes have merit but there is a concern regarding the cost and who will covers these (the state or the client). • Demand driven approaches may be more appropriate. • Targeting areas of high demand (for example, peri-urban) may be better. • A dual-level approach of more formal, demand driven registration for commercial activities and less formal systematic registration of customary rights is one approach emerging that tries to reconcile the challenge. • Role of civil society organisations is important. • There is some diversity in CSOs and their roles as advocates and as service providers. These can sometimes be in tension. • Capacity of CSOs also needs to be developed.