UKaid-funded Land Programme Launches Knowledge Hub

March 16, 2021

The DAI-led Land Investment for Transformation (LIFT) Programme in Ethiopia—one of the world’s largest land tenure projects—has launched a Knowledge Hub to share insights and lessons learned with local and international stakeholders.

“Under the Ministry of Agriculture and in cooperation with UKAid, LIFT has been a global trend-setter showing that land certification can be done efficiently and effectively at a large-scale,” said Andy Smith, LIFT Team Leader. “LIFT takes an all-encompassing approach that includes securing landholder’s tenure rights through certifying land and ensuring farmers’ land rights are maintained through subsequent land transactions via a computerised rural land administration system.”

Since 2014, LIFT has distributed 12.6 million land certificates in Ethiopia, with more than 90 percent of these having a woman named as a sole or joint landholder; installed computerised rural land administration systems in 142 districts; and reached 133,966 farmers through its market development interventions.

LIFT was one of the first UKAid-funded programmes to incorporate a Making Markets Work for the Poor approach, which makes complementary market development interventions—in areas such as rural rental, access to finance, and access to agricultural inputs—to facilitate the process by which newly certified land owners invest in their land.