peri-urban areas were registered, as were 10,000 land parcels in three districts in Uganda under a similar program. Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, and Burkina Faso have been piloting rural land use plans (Plans Fonciers Ruraux - PFR) in a number of forms as another way to establish individual land use rights. While the methods used have differed (with varying degrees of success), these efforts where undertaken have done much to establish the rights of smallholders (see Box 3).

# **Box 3: Impacts of Documentation of Land Rights on Agricultural Investments and Productivity**

The same documentation of rights that strengthens tenure can reduce the cost of transactions. By 2010, both Rwanda and Ghana had reduced the cost of transferring property to less than 1 percent of property value (World Bank 2011a). The economic literature has long held that more secure tenure results in increased investment in land. The evidence from Rwanda and Ethiopia appears to confirm this, and to highlight improvements in environmental management as well. Other analysis suggests that certification-induced investment increased output by about 9 percentage points (Deininger, Ali and Alemu 2011). Investment and productivity improvements were also found in Benin, where PFR program households were found to plant more perennial crops than non-PFR households (Selod 2012).

_Inventory and registration of communal land._ Where legal provisions to recognize customary tenure and communal land already exist, registration of communal land is in many cases more appropriate than registration of individual land. Registration of communal land can be an important step in advance of securing an agreement with an outside investor (that will generate jobs within the community) or for allocating a portion of communal land to young people for new farm starts. As noted in a recent World Bank (2012b) review, registration can be very slow if there are no clearly defined community owners of land and if new formal entities have to be developed. Demarcation of communal land boundaries requires time and financial resources and registration needs to be followed up with resources to plan for land use and to delineate common property resources (such as grazing land).

_Inventory of state land._ The extent of state landownership in SSA is largely unknown, as most lands have not yet been surveyed and registered. Some SSA governments have started inventorying state-owned land, and programs in Ghana and Uganda represent notable recent efforts from which lessons can be learned. Underutilized or poorly used state land can be auctioned to the private sector in ways that combine large-scale operators and small and medium farmers in innovative relationships (although care must be taken not to disenfranchise indigenous users such as herders, subsistence communities, etc.); long-term occupants can be formally (legally) recognized as owners (as in Kenya);<sup>22</sup> and land can be made available to land-poor farmers (as in Malawi), including the young.<sup>23</sup> Individuals in pathway 2 are most likely to be the beneficiaries of any of these actions, and underutilized state-owned land is a clear source of supply for young people showing promise in farming.

> 22 United Republic of Kenya (2010) and World Bank (2011b). 23 World Bank (2004) and Tchale (2012).

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