-
135
legal and regulatory reforms adopted -
399
land administration offices established or upgraded -
325,778
land rights formalized -
364,495
parcels corrected or incorporated in land system
As of Sep 10, 2023
Land is fundamental to investment and economic growth. For this reason, MCC supports partner country investments that help secure and protect land and property rights, enable both rural and urban land to be more productive and better managed, and make land markets and other land-dependent markets function better. These projects empower the poor, strengthen the investment climate, and contribute to job and wealth creation. As a result, successful land projects can have deep, systemic, and long-lasting impact on economic growth and poverty reduction.
Why Does Land Matter to Poverty Reduction and Economic Growth?
Land and land markets play a central role in every economy. They are fundamental to household wealth and incomes; to the productivity of firms engaged in manufacturing, agriculture, or services; and they impact the availability and costs of essential human needs such as food, transportation, water, energy, and housing.The income and productivity of individuals, households, and firms depends on how well their own and others’ land rights and access are secured and protected, how confident they are that they will reap the benefits of their land improvements and investments, how easy it is to access or transfer land through sales or rental, and how well broader land use regulations promote efficient and compatible land uses.
Individual, firm-level, and public land uses are also part of larger land markets, which become distorted when they are not supported by governments through effective policies, laws, regulations, institutions, and incentives. These distortions can result in extra costs, inefficiencies, and inequities appearing in a variety of other sectors – including agriculture, transport, water, power - that can negatively impact growth, worsen poverty, undermine access to goods and services, and aggravate social exclusion.
In many developing countries, the lack of secure land rights can arise from an ongoing transition from traditional to modern market economies. These changes can pose challenges to land uses only secured by traditional, undocumented rights, and aggravate pressures on land supply and scarcity. With formal systems often not fully functional and traditional systems no longer functioning as before, existing and new land users face a higher risk of conflict, which yields insecurity and can further dampen productivity and investment. Climate changes can also contribute to land pressures, which similarly can escalate social tensions and conflict.
When Does Land Appear in MCC Work?
MCC’s programs are designed to reduce poverty and promote economic growth, and land may be an aspect of these programs or their supporting analysis in several ways:Stand-alone land projects: In these cases, land is identified as a major limiting factor or “binding constraint” to a country’s economic growth. If partner governments and MCC agree to address the land constraint, stand-alone projects typically address topics such as land administration improvement, expansion of land access or allocation, formalization of land rights, improvement of land tenure security, or expansion of land planning and management. These projects can include rural, urban, or industrial areas.
Land as a necessary complement to a project in another sector: In these cases, accompanying land activities are added to a non-land project to ensure that land problems don’t limit the project’s impact and sustainability. A primary example is in MCC’s irrigation projects, where transparent, participatory, and fair land allocation processes are vital to achieving the expected agricultural productivity, farm income, and social impact results of MCC’s investments.
Land as a dimension of MCC’s environmental and social performance standards: MCC’s adherence to the IFC Performance Standards means that land – particularly land acquisition and resettlement – can play a potentially decisive role in the sound implementation of projects in other sectors. While MCC’s environmental and social practice leads all matters related to the Performance Standards, a land and property rights perspective can be useful in accomplishing key requirements.
Land as a root cause of a constraint or problem in another sector: Land and land market dysfunctions and inefficiencies can contribute to constraints or problems in other sectors such as transport, water or power, and can influence performance of industrial and logistics sectors. For example, urban planning, property rights, or land management challenges could contribute to high costs of water supply or to high transport costs for people and goods.
Land as the driver of economic benefits in another sector: Sometimes quantification of benefits to investments in other sectors hinges on changes in land market activity – particularly increases in land sales, leasing values, or leasing incidence that unlock value in land. For example, in both Tanzania and Senegal II, land value increases were the primary economic benefit calculated for certain power sector investments.
What Principles Drive Our Land Project Work?
Where MCC invests in land, our work varies depending on the country and issues, but our collaboration with all partner governments centers on the following key principles:- Policy and institutional reform: Resolution of land-related problems often requires meaningful reform. This usually focuses on improving land laws, regulations and procedures, reorienting land institutions to better serve public needs, achieving balance between land governance policies and the capacity to apply them, supporting a stable investment climate, and ensuring efficient land market functioning. MCC supports partner countries to achieve reform that might not be possible without donor resources.
- Strong legal rights and access to land for women: Strong and enforced legal rights are a foundation for women’s economic empowerment. We work to understand with country partners to understand and reduce the barriers that current statutory and customary regimes and cultural norms pose for women’s equal access to land, land rights and land governance participation. We pay specific attention to ways women obtain rights to land, independently as well as through inheritance and formal and informal marriage. We also identify the implications for the strengthening or weakening of those rights because of potential MCC investments.
- Mobilize MCC funds smartly: We will ensure that land project implementation welcomes innovation in procurement and payment, and where applicable will explore tools that can boost project performance such as results-based financing (RBF) approaches and public-private partnerships (PPPs) in collaboration with other MCC teams.
- Appropriate technology: Our land investments promote use of the most appropriate technology to solve specific problems. To ensure long-term impact and sustainability, we ensure our investments put countries on the path to valuing new technology more broadly while building both the commitment and capacity to sustain these investments. Within this process, we pay close attention to the alignment of partner country legal and procedural standards for technology tools and their alignment with market developments and cost-efficiency.
- Flexible, citizen-oriented tenure options: Where we focus on localized land tenure security operations, we seek to secure commitments to flexible approaches. This includes development of uncomplicated and low-cost titling instruments; using easy, low-cost mapping tools, and broadening the universe of stakeholders who can meet partner government standards for information gathering and management.
- Demand and private sector engagement: We support interventions that respond to existing demand of citizens or the private sector for land and land administration services, or have the ability to generate demand. We will advocate for the role of the private sector in delivery of land-related services, recognizing the market as a force for technology change to increase citizen orientation and reduce the cost and complexity of land administration services.
- Challenges of planning and land markets, both rural and urban We build understanding of the reach and limits of land use planning and urban planning investments without strong property rights systems, incentives, regulation and enforcement, and effective frameworks for inter-institutional decision making on public investment, such as infrastructure. We work to ensure understanding of the role of land markets in both enabling opportunity and underpinning exclusion.
What Do MCC Land Projects Do?
Since our first compact in 2005, MCC’s partner countries have used land funding to:- Design and implement national policies and strategies to manage land more productively;
- Develop new land laws, regulations and procedures, or update and improve existing ones;
- Formalize land rights for landholders, including outreach and training so landholders are fully empowered in their rights;
- Form new land administration institutions or strengthen and streamline the operations of existing institutions;
- Improve access to land for investors and private individuals;
- Decentralize land tenure services to local levels;
- Launch new instruments for recording land rights;
- Identify and map boundaries of communities and other jurisdictions;
- Land use planning to optimize uses of land and access to land resources;
- Develop industrial land that better meets the needs of manufacturing firms;
- Create or upgrade land information systems;
- Pilot improved land dispute resolution processes.
Country Programs
To date, MCC has invested over $500 million in land programs.Country | Amount | Time Frame |
---|---|---|
Benin | $31.0 million | October 2006–October 2011 |
Burkina Faso | $58.3 million | July 2009–July 2014 |
Cabo Verde | $17.7 million | November 2012–November 2017 |
Ghana | $4.2 million | February 2007–February 2012 |
Indonesia | $43.1 million | April 2013–April 2018 |
Lesotho | $17.9 million | September 2008–September 2013 |
Madagascar | $29.6 million | July 2005–August 2009 |
Mali | $0.9 million | September 2007–August 2012 |
Mongolia | $25.3 million | September 2008–September 2013 |
Morocco | $170.5 million | June 2017–June 2022 |
Mozambique | $39.5 million | September 2008–September 2013 |
Namibia | $23.1 million | September 2009–September 2014 |
Nicaragua | $7.2 million | May 2006–May 2011 |
Niger | $9.8 million | January 2018-January 2023 |
Senegal | $4.9 million | September 2010–September 2015 |
Country | Amount | Time Frame |
---|---|---|
Liberia | $7.1 million | July 2010–December 2013 |
Togo | $8 million | February 2019–February 2023 |
Zambia | $3.6 million | May 2006–February 2009 |