News

Environmental & gender impacts of land tenure regularization in Africa

Photo Courtesy of World Bank

Although recent developments have increased interest in African land tenure, Rwanda’s nation-wide Land Tenure Regularization (LTR) program is one of a few models to address these issues at the required scale. An impact evaluation of this program highlights four main effects; namely,

– significant and large investment impacts that are particularly pronounced for women;
– improved land access for legally married women and better recordation of inheritance rights;
– a reduction in the probability of having documented land ownership for legally unmarried women; and
– a reduction in land market activity rather than distress sales.