publicity and were repeatedly changed in ways that reduced pastoralists’ rights, something that is facilitated by the lack of pastoralist representation on deliberative and decision-making bodies at village level.

As efforts to secure community rights in Mozambique was similarly never implemented at scale (Quan _et al._ 2013) and reform to document customary rights in Malawi (Chikaya-Banda & Chilonga 2021) are too recent, requiring to go beyond Africa for good practice. <mark>Mexico combines a clear regulatory framework for documenting group rights with documented impact. Customary rights at the level of the group (</mark> _<mark>ejido</mark>_ <mark>) were r</mark> egistered to more than 100 million hectares in the early 2000s.<sup>7</sup> First, the _ejido_ was registered as a legal entity to engage with outsiders as a group with organs of self-governance (the executive, the assembly, and an oversight committee) that follow clear procedural rules and its outer boundary defined. Second, internal boundaries of community land as well as individual agricultural and housing parcels were identified and registered centrally in the _Registro Agrario Nacional_ (RAN) based on decisions by the assembly, supervised by a network of independent para-legal teams (via the _Procuradoria Agraria_ ) that was publicly supported and provided on-demand access to legal advice and a dedicated court system. Long-term transfers of land to outsiders by the community (but not individuals) are possible based on assembly decisions.

In addition to establishing clear procedures to register or transfer _ejido_ land, there is no ambiguity or competition between tenure systems and a procedure for communities to exit the customary regime and move to the private system is available. This option to individualize rights includes strong safeguards against abuse, in particular the requirement for such decisions to be approved by 75% of members in a centrally supervised assembly vote.<sup>8</sup> Studies show the program facilitated mechanization and higher productivity (de Janvry et al. 2015), fostering structural transformation via migration (Valsecchi 2014) and investment (Dower & Pfutze 2013) while increasing women’s participation (García-Morán & Yates 2022).

_Interoperability and policy alignment:_ While historically the technical complexity of documenting land rights, reinforced by established bureaucratic structures, caused a strong preference for stand-alone titling interventions, even successful interventions to document land rights at low or subsidized cost rates may not be sustainable objective if cost of subsequent registration is too high. Documenting land rights will be more effective in reducing transaction costs if linked to a clear (digital) way for individuals to authenticate their identity. Also, credit effects are contingent on viable procedures for mortgage registration or foreclosure.

The case of Lesotho illustrates how, following regulatory changes (including for mortgage registration), urban land titling can increase credit supply, especially for women. Regulatory reform in 2010 that, among

> 7 The voluntary _Programa de Certificación de Derechos Ejidales y Titulación de Solares_ (PROCEDE) had by 2008 certified more than 98% of _ejidos_ on an area of more than 100 million ha based on applications by communities ( _ejidos_ ).

> 8 Only about 9% of ejidos, mostly located closer to cities with higher incomes, levels of literacy, and reliance on industry and services rather than agriculture for income exercised this right (Ramírez-Álvarez 2019). This contrasts to ‘on-demand’ opportunities for exit by individuals via private titling practiced in many African countries which hollow out the system from within and tend to give rise to rent seeding and may foster inequality.

15