Safe Land Access Project
Client – Millennium Challenge Account (MCA)
Location – Maputo, Zambézia, Nampula, Cabo Delgado and Niassa – Mozambique
Year – 2009 – 2013
Time – 5 years
The land component of the MCA facilitated improvements in land management systems and land rights records. It reviewed the policies and the corresponding legislation.
Verde Azul in partnership with HTSPE, Lda (UK) provided technical assistance for these activities.
Assistance began in 2009 and was completed in the second half of 2013. The project was particularly focused on the four provinces in the north of the country: Zambézia, Nampula, Niassa and Cabo Delgado.
The results included secure access to land with a focus on the need to produce tangible economic impacts that are shared by the poorest and the least favored social strata in the target provinces.
The current national land policy provides a basis for the whole approach through the following statement: “safeguard the rights of the Mozambican people to their land and natural resources, promoting investment and equitable and sustainable use of these resources”.
Current activities include the establishment of an improved registration system. It is intended to guarantee the various existing rights – concessionaires and formal. It is designed to simultaneously facilitate access to land for investors, who may eventually fall under these same rights.
The program also includes new solutions so that investors and communities can work together and share the results of their efforts, guided at all points by the principles of equality and sustainability.
About 6 separate institutions are involved in this program as beneficiaries and implementers of more than 40 million dollars of development aid: National Directorate of Land and Forests, CENACARTA, CFJJ, INFATEC and Municipalities.
The actions are focused on equal access to a formal registration system, accessible and available to the most needy.
Measures are also needed to strengthen the capacity of the most deprived to use individual and community resources independently or in partnership with the private sector and public partners.
Investor access to land can change the parameters of the local production system and, if well managed, it alters the local livelihood system, offering economic and employment opportunities that can enhance income and improve the social well-being of the most vulnerable communities.
The program presents a vision of transforming cities and districts, where investment brings resources and opportunities for local farmers, it was developed for farmers’ self-subsistence in order to develop alongside investors.
The administration record will be installed simultaneously with training to match the system of resources, capacity and competencies. The entire system is seen as a tool for rural development. It will clarify land rights, while managing the diverse rights and needs. The land component has a clear operational link with the decentralization process and its emphasis on the district as the country’s development hub.