Training on “Gender-Responsive Standard Operating Procedures for Land Delivery Services in IGAD”

As part of the commitment to implement the 2009 Africa Union Declaration on Land Issues and Challenges, IGAD has used financial support from the Swedish Embassy in Addis Ababa to implement a 3-year project, “Improving Land governance in the IGAD Region”. The project seeks to improve the performance of land administration systems of IGAD’s Member States to move them closer to convergence and to enable implementation of cross border initiatives that have a bearing on land.

The development of land administration has been uneven within and among IGAD’s Member States.. For example, Ethiopia has excelled in securing land rights at scale through nation-wide programs of land certification while it is lagging in the development of unified land administration systems. On the other hand, Uganda has done well in the development of unified, streamlined and computerized nation-wide land administration systems while it is lagging behind in carrying out nation-wide systematic land registration. Like Uganda and Ethiopia, Kenya is doing well in some areas such as physical and land use planning and initiating large programs to formalize rural communities and urban informal settlements and to regularize their land rights but not so well in some areas such as digitization of national land administration systems. The other Member States of IGAD have a long way to go in developing their land administrations.