For more than half century, land governance in Ethiopia has been marked by significant control by the state over the allocation and use of land. According to the FDRE Constitution (enacted in 1995) ‘the right to ownership of rural and urban land, as well as of all-natural resources, is exclusively vested in the State and in the Peoples of Ethiopia.’
The initiative aims at strengthening the existing multi-actor partnership (MAP) working on land governance.
Strengthening the capacity for improved governance of land tenure empowers national and regional level governments and communities to facilitate the recognition of tenure rights.
Complex social challenges cannot be resolved by the efforts of a single actor. Thus, bringing together stakeholders from the private sector, the public sector, civil society, and others allows them to use their complementary expertise, skills and strengths to address any social issue.
The land also remains among the primary sources of grand corruption and a bone of contention among politicians. Land issues are still found scattered in several other national policies, development programs, agricultural development projects, plans, and proclamations.
The aim is to ensure responsible agricultural investments and to meet standards of the Right to adequate Food (RtF) and the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of land and other resources (VGGT), in order to protect the food security and livelihoods of vulnerable groups.
Dessalegn Rahmeto
Senior Resident Research Fellow at FSS
The Land for Life Initiative offers support by building or strengthening multi-actor partnerships (MAP) on land governance, organizing dialogue events on land governance and responsible agricultural investments, providing needs-oriented training, promoting civil society advocacy strategies for land rights and responsible agricultural investments.
address complex challenges through dialogue and collaboration
access (local) knowledge and expertise
orient the way actors think and operate towards the collective common good
bring all voices and interests to one table; thereby fostering legitimacy, ownership and sustainability of decisions
generate creative, innovative solutions
open up space for transformative and systemic change
We use a spiral pathway for the establishment of multi-actor partnerships, and this pathway has three interrelated stages of development:
Explore, engage, build trust
Create framework for collaboration
Seek land governance change
Collective change is generated through a longer-term process that evolves over different phases, though – in practice – those phases overlap and may need to be repeated as the collaboration evolves:
The first phase focuses on exploring the context, engaging all relevant actors and building trust through communication and joint activities. In this phase, it is important that key actors are identified who are motivated and committed to taking the initiative forward.
The second phase focuses on the creation of a framework for collaboration. Participatory dialogue and facilitation are embedded in the culture of the emerging structure, which is based on a joint vision and commonly shared values. Even though a formalization of the partnership is not necessarily required, the involved actors will need to take some decisions regarding the structure of their collaboration, their roles and responsibilities. At this stage, the former “project structure” will evolve into the Secretariat of the emerging MAP. The core group of committed actors (or some of them) will evolve into the MAP Steering Board. Concrete work plans and clarity on the budget pave the way towards collective action.
During the third phase the MAP will increasingly generate impacts towards responsible land governance:
providing a platform for different actors and initiatives that engage in a certain land governance context to learn from each other, create synergies, avoid duplication and scale up successful pilot initiatives
facilitating inclusive policy dialogue, with a focus on strengthening the voices of marginalized, rural land-owners and users, in particular women and youth, so as to generate policy proposals which are taking into account their challenges and needs
jointly responding to emerging opportunities or trends, such as the elaboration of new relevant legislation or the eruption of conflict in an investment area
Throughout those phases, it is the responsibility of the International Support Team to provide backstopping support:
facilitate capacity building of the MAP Secretariats, develop tailor-made tools to accelerate impact, promote regular learning and exchange, contribute to establishing a culture of appreciation and agile process facilitation
contribute to creating a conducive environment for national-level MAP, by connecting them to relevant international actors and initiatives and by encouraging all relevant partners to use the MAP as country-level focal point for inclusive land governance policy debate
Pursuing greater synergies and harmonized engagements at country-level will optimize the use of available resources, enhance impact, avoid overburdening national actors and straining fragile institutional structures.