Publication: New Ways to Assess and Enhance Land Registry Sustainability: Evidence from Rwanda
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Published
2017-11
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0305-750X
Date
2018-01-29
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Rwanda has recently implemented a nation-wide program of first-time land regularization (LTR) that many believe set new standards for the region. We use administrative data combined with household survey- and program-rollout information to explore sustainability of the infrastructure created in this process, including the impact of public efforts to increase registration of subsequent transactions. We find that the program provided significant benefits in terms of gender equality and credit access while opening up new opportunities in terms of land taxation or land use planning, but that high level of rural informality may undermine these in the medium to long term. While public efforts to decentralize service provision helped to significantly reduce informality, additional efforts are likely to be needed to ensure sustainability of the registry. We discuss how Rwanda can further move in this direction and draw out implications for other countries considering first time adjudication and registration of property rights.
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Publication Using Administrative Data to Assess the Impact and Sustainability of Rwanda's Land Tenure Regularization(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-06)Rwanda's completion, in 2012/13, of a land tenure regularization program covering the entire country allows the use of administrative data to describe initial performance and combine the data with household surveys to quantify to what extent and why subsequent transfers remain informal, and how to address this. In 2014/15, annual volumes of registered sales ranged between 5.6 percent for residential land in Kigali and 0.1 percent for agricultural land in the rest of the country; and US$2.6 billion worth of mortgages were secured against land and property. Yet, informality of transfers in rural areas remains high. Decentralized service provision and information campaigns help reduce but not eliminate the extent of informality. 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In less than 3 years, the Rwanda Natural Resource Authority (RNRA) demarcated 11.4 million out of an estimated 11.5 million land parcels in the country in a participatory way and at a unit cost of less than USD 6 per parcel (Nkurunziza 2015). Positive impacts at household levels were identified at various stages of the project implementation.Publication Environmental and Gender Impacts of Land Tenure Regularization in Africa : Pilot Evidence from Rwanda(2011-08-01)Although increased global demand for land has led to renewed interest in African land tenure, few models to address these issues quickly and at the required scale have been identified or evaluated. The case of Rwanda's nation-wide and relatively low-cost land tenure regularization program is thus of great interest. This paper evaluates the short-term impact (some 2.5 years after completion) of the pilots undertaken to fine-tune the approach using a geographic discontinuity design with spatial fixed effects. 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