A historic day: the first certificates are handed out to smallholder farmers by Alpheus Naruseb, the Namibian Minister of Lands and Resettlement on 30 June 2008.
Land Reform, the Namibian Success
In Namibia, the complex process of land reform is greatly speeded up by the use of appropriate technology. The latest information and communication solutions combined with innovative land registration systems have led to impressive results – largely to the benefit of communal farmers who now have secure plots to live on and to farm.
The availability of land is important for the survival of people in the developing world. In order to protect the land rights of rural people into the future, a reform of the process of land tenure is often required. This reform may call for improvements in the customary structures of land tenure in areas of land under communal management, and the redistribution of land from one group to another in other areas.
The protection of communal land rights is enhanced by the making and keeping of accurate records about every parcel of land, the people who use them, and the details of those rights. This is known as land registration. This results in a land register, which contains maps and written records about the land that are securely stored and respected as legal documents.
Reversing inequalities
In Namibia, whilst 52 percent of all agricultural land is surveyed and fenced for freehold commercial use, the remaining 48 percent is under communal management and is shared by individuals with only elementary land rights. More than half of Namibia’s 2 million people live by subsistence farming with insecure tenure in these communal areas. Such inequalities and skewed distribution patterns of land rights have necessitated a state-directed land reform programme.
In line with its policy of pro-poor economic growth, the EU allocated €3.5 million of its €53 million Rural Poverty Reduction Programme (RPRP) to assist the Namibian Government in its land reform efforts. Dr. Elisabeth Pape, Head of the Delegation of the European Union in Windhoek, cites two important factors that affected the EU’s decision. First is the willingness of the Namibian Government to follow a structured and well-ordered process of land reform, and secondly the fact that representatives of the commercial farming community fully concurred with the need for land reform measures for the freehold areas that are proposed.
Striving for security
More particularly, insecure land tenure in the communal areas had led to uncertainty about legitimate access and rights to land. This created situations where widows and orphans were deprived of their rights to inherit land left by their deceased husbands or parents. The Communal Land Reform Act of 2002 put a stop to such insecurity, by codifying equal rights of access and security of land tenure in the communal areas. It formed the legal basis for the technical process of land registration that the RPRP pioneered from its outset in 2005. This was in close coordination and cooperation with the German bilateral assistance to the Ministry of Lands and Resettlement. The use of solutions involving information and communication technology greatly hastened the process.
Dr. Elisabeth Pape singles out the introduction and implementation of the new land registration system in the communal areas as one of the significant successes of the RPRP. Hannu Shipena, Under Secretary of the Ministry of Lands and Resettlement, shares this view: “The flagship of the EU’s RPRP is land registration. Under this programme we have recorded the highest number of registrations.”
A view from the top
The process developed by the RPRP for mass registration of land parcels makes use of digital aerial photography. The EU supplied about €2 million for the acquisition and processing of over 30,000 high resolution aerial photographs, which covered –the north of Namibia over an area larger than the U.K.
Printed copies of the aerial photos are taken into the fields and used with villagers to draw lines around the boundaries of their plots of land. “With this appropriate technology two field teams have been able to survey 20,000 parcels and issue registration certificates in 2008-09” says Dr. Robert Ridgway, the Land Reform Adviser of the RPRP in the Ministry of Lands and Resettlement. Mr Shipena plans to reach the target of issuing 240,000 land rights certificates to all the people who are eligible to receive them.
One coherent system
The RPRP has also worked to improve the Deeds Registry in the Ministry. Upwards of half a million paper records of deeds transactions are stored in poor quality conditions. The information in some of them dates back at least 100 years and has legal importance. The RPRP has provided technical assistance to capture this information on computers. Eventually the land registration certificates from the communal areas will be incorporated in the Deeds Registry, to form the basis of one coherent land information system covering the country.The RPRP concludes its activities in 2010. Hannu Shipena is satisfied: “We have met the main targets which we have set with the Ministry in early 2006”.
A seamless continuation
“Land reform does not come cheaply and it does not produce quick returns to investment”, warns Ridgway. Technical support and foreign money will continue to be needed. Further help is under way: the Millennium Challenge Account-Namibia, a US Government-funded programme, has in 2010 commenced a US$ 9 million Communal Land Support Activity in the Ministry, and the development agencies GTZ, KfW and the Spanish Cooperation have expressed their intention to continue supporting land reform.
“We have helped to lay the foundation for future land reform programmes in Namibia” says Elisabeth Pape, pleased with the results of the RPRP. Hannu Shipena is certain that “new donors like the Millennium Challenge Account will follow seamlessly in the steps of the RPRP”.