Securing Land Tenure and Easing Access to Land

The report identifies systemic failures in African land administration, including the fact that only about 10 percent of land is legally documented. It argues that securing tenure through a combination of community land registration in land-abundant areas and individual titling in land-constrained areas is essential for investment. The text highlights the need to integrate customary tenure into statutory law and eliminate market restrictions to improve access for women, youth, and the land-poor, while warning against 'land grabs' resulting from weak governance.

• Africa's land sector faces nine primary challenges, most notably that only approximately 10 percent of the continent's land has legally recognized and documented ownership. Other factors include high rural ownership inequality, limited access for women and youth, underutilized state land, high transaction costs, and risks associated with climate change.
• The strategy for securing tenure should differ based on land availability: land-abundant areas should prioritize the demarcation and registration of community land, while densely populated, land-constrained areas require community-based systematic land titling for individual rights.
• Three key lessons from the African experience emphasize that communal land demarcation is a time-consuming process of dispute resolution rather than just a technical exercise, that registration is slowed when community owners are not clearly defined, and that registration must be followed by land-use planning for common-property resources.
• To transform agriculture, the document proposes three reform sets: increasing tenure security, eliminating controls on land markets (noting that fewer restrictions in Ethiopia and Uganda increased rental activities), and scaling up the integration of customary tenure into statutory law.
• Land administration in Africa is highly inefficient compared to OECD countries, taking twice as long and costing twice as much to transfer land. Additionally, professional capacity is low; Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda each have fewer than 10 land professional surveyors per 1 million people.

APA

Webmaster (2016). Securing Land Tenure and Easing Access to Land. African Center for Economic Transformation. https://acetforafrica.org/research-and-analysis/reports-studies/reports/securing-land-tenure-and-easing-access-to-land/

Chicago

Webmaster. Securing Land Tenure and Easing Access to Land. African Center for Economic Transformation, 2016. https://acetforafrica.org/research-and-analysis/reports-studies/reports/securing-land-tenure-and-easing-access-to-land/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Webmaster |title=Securing Land Tenure and Easing Access to Land |publisher=African Center for Economic Transformation |date=29 September 2016 |url=https://acetforafrica.org/research-and-analysis/reports-studies/reports/securing-land-tenure-and-easing-access-to-land/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{webmaster2016securing, author = {Webmaster}, title = {{Securing Land Tenure and Easing Access to Land}}, institution = {African Center for Economic Transformation}, year = {2016}, month = sep, url = {https://acetforafrica.org/research-and-analysis/reports-studies/reports/securing-land-tenure-and-easing-access-to-land/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }