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Integrating Land Issues and Land Policy with Poverty Reduction
and Rural Development in Southern Africa
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| 5. Incorporating Land Issues into the PRSP |
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Only four southern Africa countries have embarked on the process of drafting Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) to date: Lesotho and Zambia according to Mbaya have produced Interim-PRSPs; only Malawi and Mozambique had drafted full PRSPs by the end of
2001.21 Based on Mbaya’s review of these documents a number of conclusions seem evident:
- Land access. Malawi’s PRSP does a commendable job of linking land issues with land productivity concerns and poverty driven by inadequate land access, inability to use land effectively, poor quality land, and environmental degradation. Lesotho’s I-PRSP mentions land shortage as a contributing factor to poverty, and poverty as a cause of land degradation. However, Lesotho’s plan overall is weaker on the specifics of how land policy will be used to reverse poverty. Mozambique’s PRSP argues that land holdings do not differentiate poor and non-poor peasants; rather, the constraint is capacity and the means to achieve adequate levels of productivity.
- Tenure security. Zambia’s I-PRSP endeavors to develop efficient markets for leaseholds by improving the Ministry of Land’s information system, speeding the issuance of land titles, and accelerating plot surveys on urban settlements. The I-PRSP also proposes to implement land resettlement for displaced workers, e.g. from mining operations, and improving and legalizing unplanned and peri-urban settlements. Mozambique’s PRSP also relates tenure security to improving the efficiency of land adjudication and land registration, strengthening land administration institutions and organizing the national land register.
- Fiscal. Zambia’s I-PRSP proposes improving revenue generation by putting in place an effective tax collection system (which presumably could be used to transfer land or income to the poor).
- Poverty targeting. Malawi’s PRSP targets poverty stressed groups – landless or land scarce households, labor constrained female-headed households, estate workers or tenants, ganyu laborers, the elderly and disabled.
- Non-farm employment generation. Landlessness while one cause of poverty across southern Africa does not mean that land policy to right-size land holdings is the first-best policy choice. Both the Malawi PRSP and Lesotho White paper (Table 1A and 1B) give attention to non-farm employment generation and the need to increase productivity per unit of land through better land utilization.
- Sustainable land use intensification. Malawi’s PRSP includes a number of specific measures including broadening access to agricultural inputs, improved R&E, introduction of smallholder friendly technologies, soil conservation, improving access to domestic and international markets, irrigation, developing producer cooperatives and associations, and promoting family planning to reduce land use pressure.
- Land Redistribution. Strategies for reducing land shortage are linked in Malawi to land redistribution programs targeted to benefit 3,500 farming households. Lesotho’s I-PRSP does not emphasize the Land Reform and NRM program, even though land reform is high on the agenda of the land policy framework.
For those attending the Southern Africa session II, many if not most felt the process of developing PRSPs should help to main stream poverty reduction in national policy dialogue and help coordinate World Bank and donor funding. As part of the macro-economic framework, the PRSP should serve as an aid to help prioritize programs and activities with the over-arching aim to reduce poverty. Being country driven with full stakeholder participation is also a strong advantage.
However, aside from possibly Malawi’s plan, attempts to link land issues and land policy with poverty in the I-PRSP and PRSP to date have not been illustrious. Few of the plans adequately relate land tenure reform to poverty reduction, even though the land policy frameworks in Tables 1A and 1B show rich thought and policy experimentation with land tenure reform. Few of the plans provide poverty targets and specific indicators for who is to benefit, how and when. Land interventions too often seem geared to strengthening the system of leasehold and freehold tenure that at one extreme disregards the problem of the rural poor in the customary sector, and at the other extreme risks discriminating in favor of landed-elites who are better positioned to use these systems to upgrade tenure or acquire concessions. While leasehold and freehold tenure are not necessarily bad policy thrusts, it’s not clear how the poor benefit. Further, as Mbaya points out, the PRSPs “…appear dominated by macroeconomic issues at the expense of social issues,…empowerment of the poor,…land rights of the poor and women,…HIV/AIDS, discriminatory inheritance laws that disadvantage widows and orphans,…or inequality.
Part of the problem may be that governments are still early on the learning curve, and PRSPs will mature with time to better articulate land issues in the way that the land policy frameworks in Table 1A and 1B have articulated them. It may also be the case, that the simpler I-PRSP is, well, “too simple”, for the needs of budget and priority setting being asked of them. But, there are more fundamental problems related to the process itself.
- Very few participants in the working groups knew about Poverty Reduction Strategies or processes used to create the PRSP. Considerable time was spent in the Southern Africa session on defining basic principles, i.e. that the PRSPs have become the foundation for lending programs and for debt relief by the IMF and the World Bank, they must have a poverty reduction focus, are the responsibility of national governments, and must be inclusive of broad stakeholder interests. Further as noted by Mbaya, the PRSPs require that poverty reduction be the overarching goal, and that all donors coordinate their aid and lending programs with the PRSP. Given the highly imperfect information concerning the implementation of PRSPs by those in attendance, it is not unexpected that doubts about intent and motives would prevail.
- World Bank and donor conditionalities will tend to make these programs deterministic and tied to policy agendas set by the Washington Concensus – market oriented reforms, trade and investment policy, minimal government intervention, etc. – that excessively discount social development and non-market allocations of land. As observed by both the West Africa (Guиye, Ouedraogo and Toulmin) and Southern Africa (Mbaya) case studies, there is great concern that the PRSPs are or will become Structural Adjustment Programs in disguise, loaded with conditionalities and “north-led” interference. If indeed the northern states were interested in genuine poverty reduction, debt would be cancelled, not simply reduced, and governments would be free to undertake poverty reduction programs without the onus of conditionalities that tie government’s hands. If indeed conditionalities are to be the norm, one speaker went so far as to suggest that land should be excluded from the PRSP process altogether.
- There will be a tendency for countries to promise more than can be delivered, and there is far too little capacity to implement such programs. Are PRSPs another in a large field of unfunded mandates, national environmental action plans, structural adjustment loans, and sector investment strategies that either have not succeeded or created more work without budget and capacity constraints being relaxed?22 And given that debt relief and donor financing will be tied to conditionalities, it is questionable whether participating governments will have “true” choice.
- Will the land sector be disadvantaged in the budget battles that will inevitably follow?23 Clearly, with the PRSP used as an overarching planning process, ministries will be put in a position of having to compete for funds given a fixed budget constraint. Along with public investments and civil service expenditures will come the need to document accomplishments and produce indicators showing poverty reductions. While still too early to tell, it is possible that those ministries able to better document benefits to the poor will hold an advantage in the budget debate. What might these be – primary education, school feeding programs, vaccination programs, health care, development of physical and social infrastructure that directly benefit the poor? Arguably, investments in land administration cut across many of these sectors, but what weights will be given to land mapping, land titling, land valuation, etc. in the poverty debate.24 Clearly land redistribution that redistributes land and income benefits from the wealthy to the poor is by definition poverty reducing and equity enhancing. However, what about the impact of investments aimed to upgrade tenure security of the poor; would there, for example, be productivity improvements to help justify poverty alleviation? At least one government official from Namibia didn’t think so even though he considers more secure land ownership a priority. At this preliminary stage of PRSP implementation, one might conclude that programs able to deliver concrete and measurable short-term benefits to the poor will be more successful than programs promising long-term benefits. It is also likely that promises will win out over the ability to implement.
- Mbaya comments how governments do not see civil society organizations as serious partners in the PRSP, and some civil society partners have not seen their participation in the PRSP worthwhile.25 Based on the Kampala conference, I would have to conclude that any easy marriage involving government and civil society in decisionmaking will be an uphill fight. It is not simply a matter of wider stakeholder representation in the PRSPs or even giving civil society a stronger voice. It is a matter of civil society stakeholders being given greater control over policy and decisionmaking, and here the problems run deep. Civil society organizations derided government for its failures at the conference, while a number of government officials downplayed what civil society organizations can offer. Civil society organizations all too often are placed in a role of having to nag at government for not having done more, while government is placed in a position of having to implement policy with too few good policy tools and resources at it’s disposal against great demands. Governments, while skilled at the business of policy making, are weak on outreach to their clients, in particular the poor. And while civil society organizations are well versed in understanding and representing the needs of their clientele, they are too often poorly skilled at the complexities of government. While an idealist with a poverty-first focus might conclude that the optimal path forward is for both groups to put their differences aside, join forces and learn to work together while exploiting their comparative strengths – government on policy making and civil society at outreach and implementation – the reality seems destined instead to remain mired in mistrust and self-interests. This does not bode well for the PRSP and for the poor.
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Footnotes:
- Due to urgencies surrounding debt release for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC), the World Bank and IMF allows an Interim PRSP to be sufficient for release of HIPC funds. The I-PRSP, typically much shorter in length, provides a brief poverty assessment and policy framework (Mbaya).
- It is noteworthy, that the PRSP process is becoming less donor centric, with some donors (notably the French and Germans) still skeptical whether PRSPs will work.
- An example was provided in the case of Malawi, where land related functions were ranked well down the list of investment priorities.
- For example, Selebalo mentions in Lesotho how the land sector lacks direct advocacy at the Ministerial level and how the land reform process is relegated to lower levels of priority as a result.
- Even the Malawi PRSP, which seems the strongest to date, according to Mbaya, is reported to have failed in meeting the expected levels of civil society participation.
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