 Hi, Nana. This is Richard here. Can you hear me okay? Hello, yes, I can hear you. Great. Excellent. We're going to start the event Very shortly, and so I'm glad you can hear us loud and clear and we'll look forward to hearing for you. Okay? All right. Great. Thanks. All right. Good afternoon everyone Welcome to CSIS. I'm Johanna Nessith. I'm vice president for strategic planning and also co-directing a project that we are undertaking on development Looking at all aspects of development and how the US uses all aspects of our smart power including our private sector in Promoting economic development internationally, so I'm glad to welcome you all to talk about a topic that is big. It's complicated It's difficult, but it's really really crucial to economic growth in many many countries We're talking about land titling. We've got a great set of people here with us Bryn Fosberg is with Trimble a company that's been using GPS and other kinds of technology for different approaches to land titling Benjamin Linkow who's the land tenure Economist at USAID. I understand that he is one of the leading experts in this subject. Jolene Sanjek who is so the person I've always thought of as a leading expert on land titling and tenure who was with MCC for a long time and is now with a nonprofit called Landesa and We're very happy to welcome you Nanna Amayura by video Ghana to talk about the Ghana experience and I hope explore some of the new approaches and positive Impacts Richard Downey who is the deputy director of our Africa program will moderate the discussion. We'll have Comments and discussion from our panelists and then we'll open up to questions from the audience. Thank you very much Thanks very much Janna. Welcome everyone. Nice to see you all on this very cold afternoon To talk about land and all the complicated issues surrounding it I think to just to frame the issue a little bit. It's recognized by many development experts now that unclear or Contested rules on land ownership and land use are major impediments to economic growth Many reasons for this. I'm not going to go into all of them Our speakers will I'm sure explain some of them one of the most basic is that you know People are less likely to vote to devote time money and energy investing in their land or the property on their land If there's a risk that someone else might try to take it away from from them or challenge them Even if they wish to do so There's other important obstacles that stand in the way of people making money from their land People who don't have secure land tenure or legal title to their land Often can't put up the land as collateral and therefore find it difficult to borrow money for the investments They wish to make and of course Africa, which is the region I work on here at CSIS is one of the Places in the world where the rules governing land are most complex and most opaque What's more land and probably for this reason land is a very Contested resource with multiple claims and the absence of documentation As to who owns what or who has the right to use the land now in this in these Circumstances the rights of small holder farmers or sharecroppers often get swept aside in favor of the wealthy and the well-connected Governments or even increasingly foreign investors who in some cases are taking advantage of the confusion To snap up some prime land in Africa The lack of land titling also creates major problems for governments Of course without accurate knowledge of the value of land and who owns it It's very difficult for governments to set up functioning and efficient tax systems And therefore make the necessary investments in public services So big question then we're asking at the South Zoon is this you know How do we remove some of these barriers to clarity on land ownership and land use? So really that lands could be used and harnessed more effectively as a means of spurring economic development So as Johanna mentioned, we have a great set of panelists to help us Answer this question representing very diverse backgrounds both in public and private and the nonprofit sector oftentimes using technology and other innovative methods to Help crack this very very tricky issue and to help us get our heads around what is very complex set of issues We're going to focus a little bit on one particular case study this afternoon from Ghana as well And we're really glad we have Nana joining us from from Ghana to help us explain the issues there So let me start off really by turning to Dr. Sanjak Perhaps to frame the issue for us really, you know, you spent your career working on land rights in both public and private sectors now at Landesa previously MCC Perhaps explain to us if you can the some of the key opportunities that Strengthening land rights presents for economic development and of course, what are some of the barriers that have to be overcome as well? And actually, I think you did quite a nice job of framing the issue at a big picture level I think I'll just add a little bit of flavor to that The economics here and then touch on some other spheres of development that the same problems with land rights That and Lends that it's if it's a constraint today unlocking that constraint return it into an opportunity So in the arena of economic growth and poverty reduction you touched on The fact that when people gain secure rights to land and when the lack of clarity that exists in the legal framework governing land rights And when the cost associated with doing transactions and land go down People will tend to make better choices choices that yield increases in productivity that yield income increases that improve livelihoods You touched on those sorts of things I think there's a new literature coming out That's quite interesting that we haven't often stopped to think about and that is showing for example that There are nutrition benefits that one sees when particularly women get access to secure land rights They're educated children school attendance Tends to increase there's some studies in Argentina and a few other places that are showing positive impacts on securing land rights and education Access to education systems and these are important variables that feed right back into poor people and their avenue to economic opportunity I think I also like to stress that this Area of secure land rights is Vital for the poorest of the poor and land us as an organization focuses on the most vulnerable But it's also vitally important for the driver of growth the private sector and yet the economic engine in and of itself Which ultimately creates jobs for those same poor people? I just give one anecdote when I was working for MCC and we were in Mozambique I was talking to a lawyer Served fairly big commercial clients that was investing in Mozambique and she was telling me anecdote after anecdote that kind of summed up The cost of starting a business that required a piece of property to do the business on in Mozambique Or something like 90% higher Because of all the run-around the red tape and the lack of security around land rights and trying to find solutions to that So it's important for the poorest of the poor and we need to start there But realize also that it's important for the macro both picture and investment climate as well a lot of literature on the implications of land rights for environmental stewardship and investment and conservation and Reforestation in those those sorts of things It's the same kind of incentive story that when people have secure land rights They've got a longer-term interest and they're more likely to make right choices I want to turn to something that many of you might not have thought about but the problems that you described with land rights are also Really important in the context of disasters both man-made like wars And natural disasters, and I want to just talk about two real quick examples one my colleague Doug Batson is here in the audience, and I was going to mention you before I knew you're going to be here So but I think if you have a chance to chat with Doug Doug was in the military and probably still is but We're the fascinating book coming out of his experiences in Afghanistan on how the lack of attention to Insecure and unclear land rights was really getting in the way of achieving stabilization in that place war context in El Salvador There was an earthquake in 1996 and the fact that the government of El Salvador had paid attention to these issues and created good Information about land records made it vastly easier for them to come up with a housing reconstruction plan than it is today in Haiti For example where I understand there is some attention to these issues, but it's certainly getting in the way So this is important in that sort of development as well and finally just to touch quickly on social inclusion and empowerment a lot of evidence That particularly giving rights to women lead to things like increase in their voice in their households Their voice in their communities and the corresponding changes in outcomes with regard to children's nutrition children's education Some of the things I mentioned before Even recently there's some studies coming out showing that giving women access to secure land rights has an impact on domestic violence So I think that's a new arena There's a lot of positive rigorous evidence starting to come out Documenting these things, but I always like to tell people also just you know, I've been in the business for long enough Like any Simmons have been here on the block a few times. You know back back in the early 1990s Really this issue went off the radar screen people stopped paying attention to it structural adjustment came in markets We're going to work and then it sort of got in the way And one arena after the other whether it was investment whether it's productivity whether it's food security environment post-conflict management and so There's a lot of econometric evidence coming out There's also a lot of anecdotal evidence of how it can get in the way So we need to pay attention to it having said that final point I would like to make just in kind of overarching framing is that Despite everything I just said, it's not a panacea We all need to take pause and realize that some of these outcomes depend on what else is going on in the context So I like to talk about credit people often talk about how if you have a land title you can get credit And that's true where the banking system is working and where there are bankable deals on the other hand If a farmer doesn't have anything that will help generate income and the banking system isn't lending anyway Having a land title isn't going to get you very far So just a word of caution that there are other elements in the in the development of a place that need to be happening for the Rewards from secure land rights to be borne out and then I think Do you want me to talk about Let's outline a couple of just a couple of headline challenges, and then we'll ask None as well Okay, so as I see it there The three key challenges of today and these challenges have been around but they're front and center today and the front and center both in the sense that They're real and we need to address them if we want our program interventions to succeed, but they're also Present in the sense that people are starting to pay attention to them. So that's the good news and maybe One of them is in the area of technologies and cost effectiveness a good land title And system also has a mapping basis that that documents the physical boundaries of property and we still have not Gotten to the point where we can say we truly have a cost effective approach that is scalable to the technology side both of the information systems that constitute a registry of property rights and the Mapping system we're getting there, but it still needs attention And that feeds right into the question of whether the donor programs that are helping to put in place secure rights are sustainable It's really exciting stuff on the other hand I let my colleagues talk about that that stand to make the outcomes even better a second challenge is in the area particularly in Africa of Really figuring out how to harmonize Customary rules and norms around man tenure with statutory So what's in the formal governmental books and what's the on-the-ground reality in these customary and tribal areas? There's some really exciting things going on in places like the new and Burkina Faso and Ghana along these lines But it's still a challenge area that we need to work on and the final one is to really get the land rights occasion Understood in the context of the quote-unquote global land grab Most of you have probably seen the media attention to the large amounts of land that are being acquired for private sector investment And when I look at that I look back and I say really at the root cause of all that Concern is the basic issue that people don't have the rights document in the first place So transactions can't happen with the government. So we need to get that understood and get out ahead of that Great. Well, so fantastic overview to get us started. Let's go over to Nana I'm a year who's joining us taking her evening off to join us from Ghana. Thanks so much for being with us Nana you're the chief executive of officer of Colin deaf which start stands for the community land and development Foundation and Ghana based NGO Perhaps you could explain a little bit about what Colin deaf does and then give us your perspective from the Ghanaian standpoint and you know in very broad terms explain some of the Complexities problems over land ownership and land tenure in Ghana and and why you think it's important that this issue is Is dealt with in terms of Ghana's economic development? Was that the moment we lost? Are you there can you hear us? No, I think I have to call on the some technical assistance from one of my colleagues here and and Perhaps skip Nana for the moment and and go over to you Talking about the the USAID Perspective one of the things that you've been working on you're a member of an interagency Working group that's been looking at the land tenure and specifically at Ghana as well So while we wait to hear back from Nana, perhaps you could talk a little bit about the work that you've been Doing there and how from your point of view Lands tenure insecurity is is you know holding back economic growth Okay, well, let me let me start by giving you a little bit of background on the broader process that our Interagency working group came out of and that was the partnerships for growth initiative The partnerships for growth initiative came out of the presidential policy directive on global development And the idea is for the United States and partner countries to sit down and sort of engage in an in-depth Collaborative rigorous kind of process to really look at the evidence look at the the whole economy of these countries and and figure out what the priorities should be and figure out what what we see is the the overall constraints to economic growth and the four the four countries that are initially participating are Ghana Tanzania El Salvador and the Philippines, so We all know Ghana has experienced pretty healthy economic growth over the last ten years But the task of the partnerships for growth team was to really think about why hasn't this growth been faster? What could be done to increase the rate of economic growth and hence poverty reduction and so The following this this sort of lengthy process involving people from different US government agencies people from Different ministries in the government of Ghana the three constraints that the the team identified were access to credit Electricity right unreliability of the the power supply and then the third one was insecure land tenure, right? So I mentioned this because I want you to understand that the conclusion of this rigorous analysis right was that insecure land tenure was one of the top three issues in terms of Things that are happening in Ghana that get in the way of economic growth Okay, so why is that what are the what are the mechanisms by which insecure land tenure inhibits economic growth? Well, I'll flesh out a little bit some of the some of the points that Richard and Jaleen have already raised But basically we see sort of three main avenues One of them is in terms of investment from small-scale farmers The second is in terms of land transactions and then the third is in terms of other broader kinds of investment So probably most importantly is the first one and that's that insecure land tenure deters investment for millions of small-scale Farmers in Ghana right and as as Richard said this is this is because When somebody might might take your land or when you're you're claiming the land is subject to challenge It weakens your and your incentive to invest and particularly in Ghana Worth we're talking when we talk about what are these investments? We're talking about things like investing in higher-value tree crops right things that might take a longer time to pay off We're talking about small-scale irrigation investments investments in soil conservation and one that the that the research has really shown is important Particularly in Ghana is following right so There was a paper that showed a pretty large impact of tenure and security on reducing agricultural Productivity by reducing the incidence of following and the reason for that is that if you leave your land fallow Then it's more subject to claims by other people your tenure over it is less secure And so as a result of that people don't fallow their land as often as they would from a purely productivity maximizing perspective Okay, so so that's the that's the the first issue the second is in terms of land Transactions and what we mean by that is that when we have insecure land tenure the distribution of land is not as efficient as it might otherwise be Right and so you might imagine a household that's got lots of labor and is looking to Expand the area that it cultivates may want to buy or rent land from another household That doesn't have as much labor or another household where people are migrating to the city or something like that Right, but if the the second household doesn't have secure land tenure that kind of transaction can't take place. Okay similarly Rental markets are very important in Ghana where again households that may not have as much land as they'd be able to cultivate Rent land in order to increase their holdings and increase their output But when when rights aren't secure right these rental transactions don't take place and particularly in Ghana there's often concerns that The the renter of the land is then going to try to assert permanent rights because the person who owns the land doesn't have a Clear and demonstrable Claim to the land so that's an issue and the bottom line here with these with land transactions Is that we we see a situation where people who could use the land the most productively aren't able to access it? Okay, and then finally the third the third avenue here is in other kinds of investments one of the one of the Things that we looked at in our in our interagency working group was a study of foreign investors who identified Access to land as the number one constraint that they face when operating in Ghana Okay, so the number one problem for foreign investors in Ghana according to the investors themselves is accessing land and Obviously if investors aren't able to access land in one country, they're going to go somewhere else. Okay This is also a difficulty for Ghanaian investors Also, there's a lot that's been written about the land grab phenomenon in a lot of African countries as Jolene touched on these large-scale land transactions where Sometimes local people are being displaced by larger commercial operators And and we believe that one of the best defenses against these kinds of abuses is when the people on the ground have clear and secure land rights Okay, so those three things are sort of the main Mechanisms by which we see land tenure insecurity as a constraint to economic growth in Ghana Thanks very much Ben. Let's turn to you Brynn Well, you've worked for Trimble a company is investing working in Ghana in fact all over all over the world and using technology to help address clarity on land Really mainly by doing land surveys, but perhaps you could tell us really what work Trimble is doing in Ghana and how as a private company you're able to sort of plug into These big development objectives while of course making money as well Thank you At Trimble when we move into a new economy or a new market We really look at four pillars And we really need to satisfy those four pillars. We believe to reach success One being collaboration So we believe collaboration is essential to be to meet project goals As well as corporate growth goals second is education Third investment and fourth patients And we really look at all four of those whether we're doing work in Laos So whether we're doing doing work in Tanzania or Benin or Burkina Faso or Ghana Specifically to Ghana We we looked at Working in collaboration with both the public and private sector for our own education and determine what the requirements Were from an land administration perspective We look we ended up working with our local partner CAD consult who's an okara as well as with our corporate corporate partner being the dean to really look at What were the requirements from a land administration perspective? Primarily related to field data collection or to the surveying aspect of land administration As a group we then worked with the Ghana land commission to determine what those requirements are And really validate those and then look at our product portfolio on what our current product portfolio Could do to actually support The land administration process and Ghana from that by looking at our portfolio We we looked at our GNSS or navigation our satellite navigation system or infrastructure system as a Potential way to put in a backbone of geodact control that could be used for land titling Then in 2008 along with MCC We worked on a project pilot project in central Where roughly a 1,182 titles Were established so we really find collaboration as one one key pillar Education is essential. I think we as a group have to concentrate more on education the public and private sector Education ensures reuse of the technology after the project is over We all spend a lot of time on the project and and applaud the project But really we we leave behind an infrastructure that we want to be reused so from an educational process We actually worked with the science and technology University in Kamasi where we actually donated equipment So the surveyors of the future could utilize that technology and be fluent in that technology As they as they left school in addition we worked with a Ghana institution of surveyor As well so that the current Surveying populace was fluent with the technology and also understood what those advantages Were from a technology perspective. I think a third pillar being investment I think if you want any return you have to invest That's that applies to government that applies to business We made significant investments In Ghana and in the region and the African continent We opened up an office on Akra We hired local surveyors local geodes as local engineers to support not only the projects within Ghana But the entire West Africa region And they're currently supporting Nigeria and Burkina Faso So Investment is is incent essential Investment is also essential just from a training perspective to provide that localized training beyond the project Because I think many times we look at just a project but beyond the project is what provides Sustainability for both the private private public sector Lastly I think patients I think you Whether it be Africa or whether it be Laos or it's different than Where the Western world is usually work used to working so things like challenges in power challenges in Customs whether it be cultural customs or administrative customs power in communications power Logistics all of those things are challenges and I think the last thing from a public sector is You actually have more to learn than to give and I think what what we've learned through our work in Burkina and Nigeria and Tanzania as well as Ghana is a we've learned a lot I think we've been able to improve our solutions Significantly which provide an intangible return that they had a company just going in and looking at it from a peer return on investment As far as to the bottom line you need to look at those Intangible benefits and we've seen significant in terms of Intangible benefits because of our involvement in these projects as well as others Thanks very much Brynn judging by the background glitches and noises. I think we've been rejoined by Nana I've already introduced although I she probably didn't hear my introduction. So thanks for joining us again, Nana With Colin deaf based out of Ghana We've heard the the overview from our experts here in in Washington about some of the big issues around land reform Perhaps you could give us a an overview of some of the main challenges In Ghana around land some of the and over some of the different Tenure systems and stats statutory versus customary and so on And also why in your in your view it's so important to clarify these issues for Ghana's economic development Well, thank you very much. I'm sorry for this technical hiccups. I Don't know what happened. Yes at a time when I was about to speak the line went off I'm sorry for that Okay, yes, then As you mentioned all under briefly. It's an organization based in Ghana that works to support Interventions to strengthen land-tenure security Our focus is mainly for land access at the customary level so that our intention is that Those who engage in the land sector at the customary level at all levels of interest would have their security of tenure guarantee And why are we so much interested in interventions at the customary level? You know, Ghana operates a draw system of land governor There is the state system and there's also the customer system Records have it that about 80 percent of the total land area in Ghana is under the customary system What this means is that when we talk about the quantum of transactions on land Then you would see that a lot of it happens at the customary level The duality comes in in the sense that when anyone who wants to engage in the land market Engages on a bilateral negotiation with any traditional institution Then that person or that entity have the obligation To pass on to the state system Where there is registration whether it's regulation of development whether it's plumbing and all of that and So you can never complete your land transactions only at the customary level You will always have to move on to the state system where registration documentation and all of that is done But that is what the difficulties are The bilateral negotiation itself is cumbersome in the sense that There is an quality of ownership of the land in the customary system When one is engaging one runs the risk of knowing who the right owner is and who to engage Within the Damien system there are all kinds of traditional institutions that come with different configurations and So as you move in from one traditional area in Ghana to another You are likely to engage with different levels of traditional authority Some are called tools some are called chains some are called families How do I know whether the area I am engaging in is a family land area or a two-land area? It is left to the individual or the entity to find out But it creates a lot of complexity even for that level of engagement and so you end up sometimes Ending in the hands of some unscrupulous people Who tried to you know make some gains from this absence of public information The other issue within the customary system is the fact that Even though there are diversity of traditional authority, there is one most common characteristics which is the absence of documentation or records on the land transaction So a particular traditional authority have oversight responsibility for a lot that's of area That's not having any accurate records on what kind of transactions have occurred on the land over time the content of those transactions and Periods for which those transactions will expire and So sometimes you end up Getting situations where the same part of land are given to two or three people who do not know that transactions have occurred with other people So it is quite difficult to really get clarity on what it says you are going in for how much it is going to fetch for you and Even the nature of security you have for what you negotiate for The other issue is about the registration As I mentioned, even if someone is so fortunate to have clarity at the customary level and so it's now Prepared to move on to the system of registration That is also another big hurdle that creates a lot of challenges Drama operates two systems. We have the title registration and the image registration That registration is considered as a more Secured type of registration and so it has been encouraged Yes, I'm from now in Ghana. We started writing registrations since 1986 and Some some modern, you know, ten years now We are still doing such a registration only in Accra and Cema, which are the biggest cities and passing to the second largest city in Ghana All the rest of the country still fall under deed registration So for many people who engage in the land market There is compulsion up to which type of registration I qualify to do And so you get people Misusing them that they change. Oh, I have a title. I have a title But you go into it and you realize that it is only a deed registration Beyond that, there are a number of agencies involved in the land registration system All of these perform different functions to complete the process of registration But you would be surprised that on the street of Ghana The average educated person That's not even understand where to go for which service Because those services are more or less shrouded in some kind of ambiguity So all they know is that when you have a land transaction completed at the local level You go to a place where you do your registration Yes, there are the survey division. There's a survey division. There's a type of registration division There is a deed division and so on and so forth These enquiries create some problems. And so people end up Sending their documents to places where they are not supposed to send and in the end they lose that the document Because of that complexity also you have a lot of you know corruption Because then officers who are working now have the option to say that I can set your documents through the process for you And then really have to say something besides the officiality Because of this complexity what many people do is that after they finish the bilateral negotiation at the customary level they end it They don't move ahead to the title registration or deed registration Because it's difficult It's financially inaccessible for many and even geographically it's also inaccessible for many and So they end up there But that is where all the problems come because then there is a massive of public information on that kind of transaction That's okay at the customary level That's when there are issues of compulsory acquisition by state or by some other organization Then you don't have any documents to support your own asset or even to describe the kind of ownership you have in the land And so issues of compensation becomes very clumsy for such So there are quite a lot of problems Not the least it's also to mention the fact that you know because we operate the drug system You have some interest in land or some rights in land that are purely emanating from the customer system a Typical example is the customer freehold interest our law in Ghana until recently did not allow the registration of fatal interest in land So it is difficult for some of these interests which are customary to be transferred into documentation and registration Yes, the reality is that a lot of the land users at the local level Depend on these customary interest For their survival and for their economic activity on the land There's one aspect of registration or documentation for such rights creates difficulties for them for sustained engagement with the land for a sure security of tenure and for you know economic livelihood Because of these which is not exhaustive anyway, but because of our time Let's have committed itself to devote attention to public education Because we believe that much of the issues are not now issues It requires local action And when people are themselves empowered to understand the system they are working with To understand the mechanisms that are in place no matter how the defective they are If they know this is a system to protect the security of tenure I can have Then in their own capacity, they will take up that responsibility to move on So cool on this and back on public education awareness creation on land laws and land rights focus on the system that operates in Ghana the legal and regulatory framework the institutional arrangements Explaining to them what institutions are available and who that's what where and how apart from that Columbus is also involved in institutional strengthening Well, we work with a traditional authority which is a very significant institution in land administration in Ghana Helping them to understand the dynamics occurring in the land market now and And how they can strengthen their institutions to support the current dynamics The particular issue we work with with the traditional institutions is the need to maintain gender in land administration at their level So we educate them. We do a lot of training for them We also help them to perfect their system in such a way that it becomes the time that supports the situation of tenure For example, one typical thing we've been doing with them is what we call the community-based land administration system where we design a simplified format for Documenting land transactions So that it is till it to the customary arrangement for the particular that is now area and It is institutionalized So that every transaction that goes on at the customary level is recorded in fact simplified format That's the case in is that It is better to have such a simplified system If we are not able to assess what is happening at the regional and national level How is that a system? It's a fair step to help protect The interest of those who are engaged in such transactions actually up to a level in as much as the traditional Authority itself has recognized and institutionalized such an arrangement Well, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off there and I know there's a slight delay on the line there but you've given us a very detailed overview of the real Flexities of the situation and regarding land and so many levels there and a little bit of an overview of Colin Dev's work as well and we'll come back to you Shortly, but I want to go round to our panelists here in Washington as well and follow up with a couple more Questions and Jolyne first first back to you, you know before landesa you work with the MCC For a long time as well and so with you know putting together all of that experience you've had I'm kind of interested in Explaining to us here some of the sort of lessons learned from your perspective of working with Governments working with the local institutions such as the one that nano is working with and and also with With trimble the likes of you know some of the private companies are involved in this sphere as well So perhaps you could kind of give us a sense of Best practice lessons learned things to avoid and something like that Sure, I'd love to do that Let me start with Speaking about country partners Through the lens of MCC's core philosophy of country ownership because I think country ownership at large Makes a big difference in effectiveness of development programs But particularly in this area of land tenure where land tenure goes to the core of societal issues It goes to the core of political issues and it goes to the core of economic issues so Some of the challenges and failures that we've seen in the past when we worked on land issues We're precisely because we weren't taking a country-owned approach that allowed For some of the understandings needed in those particularly political and social domains to be effectively built into the way we're approaching reform and I think From the very beginning the fact that in MCC's country-owned model The request for programming in a particular area including land tenure is demand driven It comes from the country itself Not just the government, but the government through a broad consultative process with civil society organizations like NANA's with private sector firms from their own country and private sector firms from outside their country and so When I think 11 of the rid when I was working at MCC there was something like 11 or 12 Land projects out of a portfolio of 18 or 19 Compacts and to me that is a big statement about political will Towards reforming these issues and that political will starting point is non trivial You know again in the past when World Bank or USA where I also used to work for many years before MCC Went in a country and said we want to work on land tenure with you and here's how we think we should do it Often you would put programs in place But they wouldn't effectively move forward because the government really wasn't ready and really hadn't bought in really hadn't consulted with its own members of society about how and what they wanted to do and so it's a different starting point and I find that it makes a Tremendous difference and I point out particularly Madagascar and Burkina Faso As examples where MCC went into those countries at a point where the governments themselves through long policy Debates internal to the country had come to the conclusion and we're on the verge of passing very broad and very forward-looking comprehensive land policy reforms That's an ideal point to come in with a big program of 36 million dollars like MCC did in Madagascar to try to push that Will and that policy reform into implementation and getting down to land titling to Techno the information systems solutions, etc MCC has also invested in some countries that where the demand was there But maybe the political will in the sense of those two policy examples Wasn't quite there for example Stuart Tyler worked a lot with us and as to tremble in Benin at the end of the day the Progress under MCC was very good but it was a much harder struggle in Benin because The various parts of the government and the dialogues with their stakeholders hadn't really happened in terms of what types of reform And where do we want to go with approaching customary systems and and harmonizing those in law with statutory? Where do we want to go with information systems? Who needs what are we going to decentralize the land registry or not? Those decisions hadn't been made and that complicated the ability to roll out and implement You know a similar sized program as we had in Madagascar And finally another example that Another piece of the country ownership and the partnership I think is you really get the best of people like myself Mark winter folks around the table who have Been able and had the fortune to look at these issues around the world and Us being able to come into a country where perhaps the people in the driver's seat haven't seen a particular approach or Issue yet and they're confronting it They don't know what worked in another country that had a similar issue Maybe a similar context to theirs and what didn't work yet what they do know is Precisely common sense in their country precisely what political strategies are going to work precisely What are the ways that can work to mitigate risks? What are the vulnerabilities? What's what are the right stakeholders? And so when you put together International lessons learned with that local knowledge and that local knowledge being in a context of political will You really can get some powerful Results and sometimes it also takes I won't pretend it's easy sometimes it takes You know that the twinning of sort of a collegial partnership So I'm your peer and that's what country ownership buys you as a space where the donor and the country are peers And so we have a professional collegial where we can talk about technical issues But also sometimes the donor like MCC having to say like we did in our Nicaragua project look This project is failing. It's really not working and here's why we think you know what we think are the problems But you have to fix it where we're going to stop funding and so MCC didn't say here's the solution They said here's the problem. We're really concerned. We're about to cut this activity off You have a certain amount of time to go consult with your stakeholders figure out in your own context a solution path And they did this was before the bigger political issue came up in Nicaragua Where we had to go down the project but before that just some of them one of the mill types of Project problems that happen commonly in development There was there was a real problems and we were able to use country ownership to say get a much more effective solution Track and one which was bought into and quite actively and promptly sort of put into action so that then the project went forward Let me talk a bit about Private firms because I think that's an exciting new dimension in the whole arena of Reform and property rights systems And I want to talk about it from a couple of angles the first one I'll just be very brief on this is the private sector Using their voice and their leverage to help create the political will that I just spoke about And I you know there there is a small but growing number of private firms who are out there Trying to create awareness and steward titles been doing this for a long time tremble is now growing its presence Esri I think that's also spoken into this issue quite a bit But there's room for for much more of that So if if we believe what we just said that earlier in the panel three of us said you know this stuff gets in the way of productive economic growth and Opportunities for private sector come along with economic growth if we believe that then it ought to be in a general It ought to be on the agenda of private sector firms to speak to their peers and governments where they're trying to do business To speak to their business partners about getting this agenda on the attention of Of the politicians and others who are in a position to make reforms I'm I was really pleased to see on the heels of maybe a couple years of heated debate about what's called responsible agribusiness investment, which is the Twin side of the land grabs issue that we talked about and I was really pleased to learn This fall that a group of private sector investors including TIA creft have now gone out on their own and Announced that they are subscribing to a set of principles of responsible agribusiness investment Which include paying attention to the land rights issues when they're going into land acquisitions And so that's a really good example where some major players in the private sector can come out and make an effective statement about This issue area Some private philanthropic organizations are also starting to realize that those branches of the private money Can effectively help support reforms in particularly supporting NGO efforts That may not be supported as robustly through public sector programs So Landessa for example gets 80% of its funding from private sector and only 20% from Contract business with the US government and the World Bank and others I think that's a growing arena also on the on the the most exciting angle. I think is really What we're starting to see in a few places and again some of the folks here like Stuart and Trimble are at the cutting edge of this And there's a few other Kind of entrepreneurs that are out there trying to say In fact if you look at the A to Z of what needs to be changed and what needs to be done better in the arena of making land rights effective maybe G to Z should and ought to be done by the private sector and right now it's being done by the public sector So, you know things like mapping land Things like helping people put together their dossier of paperwork and evidence that needs to be submitted to the government For it to be formalized Can and is starting to be done by private actors whether it's a for-profit firm or NGOs And I think that's an exciting arena that we need to to pay more attention to some of the reasons that hasn't rolled out faster I think my colleague from Trimble touched a little bit about one is sort of a time horizon So a private sector has a business bottom line to pay attention to that often isn't as patient patient as development capital And so there's a time horizon. It'd be interesting to ask The folks here from Trimble and Stewart to talk a little bit about why they have decided that it's worth having the patients making Investments now Understanding that there are market opportunities that will emerge later on from those same early investments There's some issues in terms of private public partnerships. There's some tricky areas that MCC and others are starting to figure out and that you know, how do you how do you have an alliance with a private sector? That doesn't sort of violate procurement rules On on these kind of development projects. So there's some practical nuts and bolts types of things and just one last word in terms of sort of collaboration with donors Yes, I can talk maybe too much about the stuff But I think it's important you know some people often you worry about you know different donors So taking different approaches and there have been times in the past when World Bank USA Others have been in a particular country like back in the 80s when I was in Honduras sort of advising at odds about the same policy issues It's been a lot of progress on coming up with a harmonization of Donor perspectives and common lesson learning and that's a good thing But the best thing is when countries like Madagascar take country take the donor coordination into their hands and create a land reform program under which all donors have to Put their assistance and that creates a common framework that causes that kind of shared approaches and then there's also the nuts and bolts just like I said with regard to private sector a really good example of Mozambique where MCC came in and wanted to support something called the Mozambique Community Land Initiative Which was really working with customary communities to help them help themselves get their land rights secured and Quickly there was a it was a program that was funded by seven different donors and MCC wanted to contribute Quickly ran into you know the US government doesn't do basket funding. We don't give we don't give budget support We don't do basket funding So how can we make this work and we essentially were able to come up with a Parallel structure on the mechanic so where our money which bank account our money was in what kind of procurement rules But one which was harmonized and was governed by an overarching conceptual framework that all the donors subscribe to so it was the same Exact program it was governed by the same steering committee, but mechanically it ran through different channels So we found a way to do it But those things have to be thought through and get in the way so it's important nuts and bolts important Well Ben turning to you with your USAID hat on part of the work that you Did for this interagency group folks on Ghana had a set of specific recommendations for you know what the US can do What's the value added of the US? Engagement on these issues of land reform land security perhaps you could You know explain what you think the US has to offer in this area from a government perspective Okay, well, let me start by saying I think that our our work in this area was a good illustration of sort of the evolving philosophy of Land tenure interventions that's happened over the last few decades Back in the in the 70s and 80s donors and governments used to try to address these issues Usually through these large-scale systematic land titling programs, which often didn't have the intended result Jolene talked a little bit about that But these were you know, not not particularly effective sometimes even counterproductive certainly not cost-effective in terms of generating the kinds of Outcomes that were that were hoped for Why why didn't these kinds of things work? Well for one reason is that a lot of the the Governments of the countries where these initiatives were taking place. I had low capacity, right? Didn't really have the Capability to enforce property rights in a lot of cases. They weren't able to maintain updated property registries resolve disputes things like that And the bottom line is that if the government can't enforce the rules, right? Then a land title is just a piece of paper, right? A land title is completely meaningless if there's nothing behind it and I think that's kind of the lesson that we've learned there's certainly other other factors there particularly That we've learned to kind of recognize the customary system and try to work within the customary system in In doing these kinds of things But to sort of summarize that evolution that's taken place I think we still see an important role for registration and document documentation of rights We still see that as an important part of the process But equally if not more important is is a whole set of other processes such as building and strengthening government institutions, right? Doing this through a process that local actors are engaged in that local actors buy into Building awareness of property rights among the people who have them And making sure that that formal systems build on customary systems and work in in concert with them Okay, so that was sort of the perspective that I think our Recommendations reflected and also what I think some of the other donors in Ghana have been doing and just to give a couple of examples Very briefly of what other donors have been doing MCC has piloted a process of effective and efficient land registration That's gone along with large-scale public awareness campaigns as well as institutional strengthening particularly at the local level Another major donor in Ghana in the land sector is the World Bank Which has had a couple of major programs that that In total have represent over a hundred million dollars in investments And those have been for things like supporting legal reforms. They've also supported a process of codifying customary systems so essentially trying to understand the customary rules in different places and And and regularize those and put those down on on paper to make them clear They've also the World Bank has also done other other kinds of institutional strengthening capacity building a lot of working on dispute resolutions So when our interagency group meant to talk about what we could do You know, we recommended not not to engage in some kind of huge, you know Monolithic titling program like we might have recommended 30 years ago But rather we recommended to sort of build on these existing efforts by donors and to try to use our US government resources as cost-effectively as possible and Two particular interventions that I'll talk about that we that we recommended One was to provide support for an institution in Ghana called customary land secretariat's and these are community-level organizations that essentially help traditional authorities with the the the day-to-day tasks of land administration, right with things like recording rights with with Updating records and things like that. So these are a set. This is essentially the land administration system within the customary system And there's been evidence that these institutions have worked very well in some cases, but that they've been underfunded So we recommended Working with the customary land secretariat's to provide them with more training with more equipment And to sort of modernize the way that they're that they're recording and registering these rights that are administered by traditional authorities The second a second recommendation we have that I'll highlight was to support a participatory and inclusive process of demarcating boundaries between communities and this is this is a big issue in Ghana because Often it's not clear which traditional authority has jurisdiction over which area and the boundaries are not clearly defined And so this can lead to to conflicts between communities Particularly as they're growing and particularly as people are expanding the areas where they settle And and this is sort of a growing problem in Ghana And we particularly highlighted this one because as population pressures increase, right? This is something that's going to get worse and worse and so we think that that's stepping in now and and and sort of Establishing clear records and clear demarcation of which communities where and which traditional authority has jurisdiction where would be an important Contribution and something that could save a lot of potential trouble down the road Thanks very much and Bryn over to you one of the sort of overarching themes of this series of events we're holding is is how to kind of Leverage the private sector more effectively in US development policy and practice so from your perspective and Trimble's work in Africa and elsewhere You know, how do you think that the US government can sort of work more effectively to assist you in what you do And also to further its development agenda at the same time So actually today, I think both the World Bank and MCC do an excellent job at promoting technology transfer And they really look at technology as a productivity multiplier and not technology to Replace the land administration process So I guess I would like to applaud both for their support and technology I think if you look at land administration from a pure mathematical perspective The math behind land administration probably hasn't changed since the time of gals But if you look at just in the last 50 years the technology used in land administration has increased productivity or has the ability increased productivity by thousands of percent and improved quality by 50 or greater percent so I Think what is important for government in the private sector in the private sector being those who? develop technology as well as utilize technology Need to sit down together so that we from the private sector can give Input into what our solutions do and how they can be adapted to the land administration processes of a specific country or region and Where they can improve productivity and where they may not Because in some cases they may not so I think a healthy dialogue on What solutions are available today and how they're different of the solutions in the past is one important aspect Think the second place where I think government can engage private sector more is actually in the industry segments And when I say industry segments, I mean mining or utilities or construction Today they have a lot of use for a multi-use cadast They have a lot of use for many of the technology solutions That we use from a land administration perspective They also have a lot of background in that area So I think partnering with those whether it be mining companies or utility Consortiums or construction companies they can provide us valid input and also can potentially be sponsors and assist us in developing Land administration for a country or region Third I think today if we look at Land administration, I look at primarily US government, you know There are many US government agencies today like the Corps of Engineers US Coast Guard National Geoduct Survey who have used this technology and used it through its evolution Where it's come in the last 20 years Consistently in doing their work, and I think the federal government can really Leverage from a US perspective Leverage their knowledge in the review of proposals and the review of technology because they've used it For the last two decades in many of the applications we look at today from the land administration Thank you I'm going to open it up to questions in a couple of minutes But just want to give Nana another chance to give us a brief comment on really from your perspective Ghana's received a lot of assistance from World Bank multilateral institutions for private sector and other government actors as well But you know from your point of view, what are the most useful things that? That donor governments and private companies can can do to help To help resolve some of these really tricky issues on land tenure What are the gaps in your mind the most important gaps that have to be filled still? Well, thank you very much. I think The main points that really need attention are already highlighted by the first two speakers But what I would want to add is a fact that what has been started needs to be sustained For example, let's talk about the rural land title registration by MCC It is a very beautiful effort. It has yielded very good results But it really limited in terms of areas where this has happened It is important that for us to achieve impact We expand and we deepen what we do in this project Talking about the legal reform under the World Bank last project And it has taken a while But I think we have made some progress in discussing various provisions that should go into the new land scale To reflect the current dynamics, but again, it is still at the national level So to say but if we really want impact The dialogue the consultation should really happen also at the local level where action is taking place So it is a good effort, but it needs further difference now the level where People actually are able to make the input into it to tailor it to be a need I couldn't agree more when the First speaker talked about the need for enforcement A link to that is a system strengthening of government institutions which are very key But when we talk about strengthening of government institutions, we should also not forget about strengthening of the traditional institutions Because as I have mentioned A large part of land transactions are managed by the traditional institutions So if we are talking about land tenuous Jewish And we focus on strengthening government institutions without paying equal attention To the traditional institutions at the customary level Then we end up creating that imbalance We have strong government institutions with very Low level capacity local institutions and that will perpetuate The kind of delay that we have had in the system So yes, certain governments institutions, but they equal attention to the traditional institutions Especially at this point in time when we all agree that It is not possible to totally do away with the traditional institutions We still have to work with them and so we need to strengthen them as well If you listen to the private sector, I just have two quick comments And what I would like to say is that yes, the important part of the private sector is critical because the land sector is a highly technical area And so we would need a technical expertise of the private sector Okay, we also need to acknowledge that Now the land discussion is much more than just a technical discussion It's also a development subject Which requires some development skills in managing the issues around it Which in many many cases from experience Private sector people do not approach it from that angle And so we end up having technologies in place Which are not connected to the needs of the local people or the people who are to use it Or we end up having systems that are too complicated to manage Looking at the issues we need to work on And so yes, private sector involvement But private sector blended with the development approach In dealing with the land questions so that we are actually able to manage what really is relevant To address the issue of land seniority Thank you. Well, we've got a few minutes left for some questions Please introduce yourself and give your affiliation and there'll be mics going round So none of can hear the questions as well So let's as you the gentleman at the back had his hand up first So let's let's take Kim and then we'll take a couple of others as well Yes, sir. Thank you very much. My name is Peter Radley formerly of international land systems now at Thomson Reuters I'm a little disappointed in the title of the talk today because I thought I'd gone back 20 years See that title in the title I thought we'd moved on to continuum of land rights and something a little more reflective of the complexity of what we're trying to deal with I was disappointed not to see more discussion about authority Land rights and the protection of land rights is dependent upon the authority that stands behind it Whether that's a family a customary environment or the statutory environment And the governance of that authority is critical You can mention all the other things, but those two are essential to me Um, I think we need to be careful in claiming lots of research and evidence I think if you look at our sector, it's very thin compared to many others The best data set is still Peru the best longitudinal data set and that's probably barely even 20 years And that's the one that's kicking forward some of these new findings about particularly women's societal security and so forth I was very happy to see Brynn talk about all this wonderful work that they're doing in Ghana And I agree technology has made tremendous strides. In fact, uh, it's a wonderful casio phone camera up to $250 we built in gps And there's a wonderful new iphone 4s that has both Russian satellites and our own gps, which are fantastic data collection devices that are extremely cheap For us to use in the field So the the question that I have actually specifically for tremble And as a member of the private sector, of course Future revenue stream is always key for anything that we do When could we expect a sub 1,000 sub meter Collection device that we can use both in the rural and the urban areas Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Uh, yes, uh, I'll take a question right at the front now for me. Thank you Thank you very much. Yeah, I quit. I'm with Adna here in Washington, but I'm from Ghana I won't reach it to invite me back. So I'll slice my question to very short I appreciate that And So my question is can you see an area areas where you will need to Sort of downgrade the development principle and say in this instance, uh issues of social justice and democracy And and and even group rights Should be elevated above Growth issues. Thank you. Thank you. And we'll take one more question immediately behind Behind you there. Thank you John harborson Uh, yeah John harborson john hopps john's up in size. I want to pick up for the last speaker's point First of all, I want to say for them, I'd like to see a couple Madison phds On the program. Wisconsin used to have a land tenure center, which was the believe the edge and need to restore I don't think enough attention to pay To the equities The land conflict overlapping rights, that's the preliminary It's really conflict management Because I know best our epi opiating Kenya where the land Are There's no how Okay, great. Well, let's take those sort of questions Bryn, perhaps you can respond to the the first one and then The rest of you can kind of fill in some of the gaps that we haven't we've not talked about and and definitely talk about this Issue of conflict and conflict risk and conflict management as well. But Bryn over to you first So I think if you look over the last 20 years from a gps perspective, you've seen A significant change in the price point I can't remember if you said sub thousand dollars or it was You know, I think you'll find the industry is approaching that for a certain capability um From a peer technology perspective really GPS alone or glow not glow nas alone or gal la alone or whatever satellite based system you want to take Is really of no value without the application software around it and I think Whether it be ourselves or Trumbull or others we spent a significant amount of time of going from Here's the signal to applying that signal that satellite signal to doing a piece of work Because the piece of work is not just the position So on your iPhone 4 s you probably can get I'm guessing a couple meters probably From a positioning perspective When will you see the iPhone 4 s less than that? I don't know is the answer but if I look at the technology curve Just in the 25 years that I've been in the surveying industry You know when I started we were looking the way we positioned ourselves was with a theodolite Looking at the stars and and really from that doing an astral positioning Just in those 25 years We went from that to being able to get a centimeter Real-time position, you know on the order of 10,000 15,000 dollars So, you know, we've seen a significant change. I think demand is going to drive it more I think the come out, you know the commoditization of position is going to drive it more When it's exactly sub one thousand dollars I really don't know. I think you're seeing solutions that are actually approaching that At different levels of accuracy today You can't give you a specific. I'm sorry So, uh, let me jump in and um, maybe talk first on Peter's questions and comments and then Maybe the other two Together because they were similar in what they were asking So I have to say that I had the same reaction to the title But I didn't make a comment or talk about that issue because To my pleasant surprise The moderator in introducing this did not follow into that cap and rather talked about lantanier and mentioned some of the complexities And so for those of you who don't know what Peter and I are talking about That, you know, there there was a time period and to some extent there are some maybe very senior people who still Maybe have this simplistic understanding that, you know, what we call a land title, for example here in the united states Um, which in some places like in the frank french-speaking world Really relates to very a very specific kind of right over land, which is fee simple Individual ownership and what has there's been a great realization since back in the 1980s where most of the programs were literally going out And doing that kind of titling that we need also to pay attention to understand and find ways to record and secure communal types of tenure In even individual tenures that might be leaseholds might be use rights When you're for example in benign when you're giving an ownership title There's a need to also recognize and somehow make secure secondary rights of use for example harvesting Are going, you know taking cattle across a piece of land. So there's a land rights are not a monolith of ownership There's a whole panoply of types of rights and they're all valid even here in the united states We have condominiums we have cooperatives we have all kinds of things the basic point is they need to be secure and effective so, you know the Cape Town, South Africa does not have fee simple ownership titles But they have a wonderful economy because their leasehold rights are secure and efficiently transactable So I think that's the innuendo that peter was referring to and we as professionals tend therefore When we come up with titles two sessions not to use the word land titling but something that captures some of that robustness I will just use that as a segue to a point on technology where You know some of the same problems with technology coming in and maybe not offering Picking up on what Nana said not sort of operate offering kind of solutions that are robust and some of the same ways and There has been a tremendous effort in the last few years to for example find Ways to create a data map solution for land information systems that can record multiple rights of Over the same piece of property can record record lineage can record I mean simple things like having the form of a document whether it's a title or something else Having two spaces so the man name and the woman's name could be on it Those are real things that weren't happening And so There are technological innovations that are coming along that are lining up With some of this more robust reality on the question of authority. I don't disagree with you at all I stated a very general level on purpose and in some ways when I was referring to political Well and the issues of having a policy framework in place many of the issues whether it's the question of whether the Whether the authorities for making decisions on allocation of land Whether it's the management of the data over land whether it's the authorization who's signing the title Is happening at the local or state or national level? Are critical issues that need to be figured out and over which there are significant arguments Benin's one of the that was one of the very precise issues in benin that took quite a while in our program for the policy process with stakeholders involved to really Come to an agreement at a consensus on the direction it was supposed to take so don't disagree And I think that's also when we were talking a bit about You know, how can government partner with private sector your own experience in your pilot project in gana Which is one of the few where you know peter as a private entrepreneur is taking on some of the you know We can offload from the government and do as a private service some of these pieces of a land registration One of the key issues and with you and with one of your peers that's doing something similar in gana is precisely The question of authority, right? So if you can create a database and record people's claims to rights and it gives a socially legitimate database But when does the question of the government legitimizing and recognizing those Paralegal titles or certificates that come out of a private Registry registry effort. When does that have to happen so that they can have the full impact that they might have? On the evidence, I I don't agree with you that proves the only or the best Data set I do agree with you that the evidence is still too thin But relative to where it was before there is a growing body of evidence There's some very compelling studies from Ethiopia from Uganda I just heard about another study from Uganda Some of the domestic violence literature i'm seeing coming out of southeast asia where londesa puts a lot of time and You know so You know some of it I guess my point in saying that is there is a growing body of Increasingly rigorous evidence that is pointing towards these results And I think those match up with our intuitive understanding and the practical kind of constraints that those of us who have been practicing development for a long time So I feel confident saying that even though you've heard me and many other settings say I'll be careful with the evidence because First of all just because tidal gave credit in thailand doesn't mean there's going to be a credit market impact in many other places And so there's some people who might take a bit of evidence and sort of Generalize way too much and that's part of the caveat I was trying to make and then just to put something Interesting from mcc one of the things about mcc's model is that it built in impact evaluations from the beginning of its programs So pretty soon now we're going to have a whole bunch more Studies coming out of these big land programs that mcc put in place and it'll be interesting to watch that evidence and see What it tells us both in terms of what is and what isn't working So I encourage all of you to try to watch those most of the projects are coming into their last year So pretty soon we should be seeing some further evidence on the democracy and governance Couldn't agree more. I think I guess In terms of land conflict being understood I mentioned it at the level of broad civil war and conflict It's very often a trigger or kind of a kindling in there But I think in the context of what we're talking about here It's also very important to realize that The process of recording rights of giving a title or something else can often surface conflicts And feed into them and so what we've learned to do more or less Well depends on which country and who's doing the programs is to try to build in dispute mediation into The programmatic approaches and just for example an mcc's program in Burkina Faso One of the things that they've decided to do precisely because of that is Kind of do a community-based land use mapping prior to doing any documentation of individual or family or clan lands So that you the communities can come to agreement and sort of map out This is where the cattle corridors are going. This is where people are farming land This is where this the property of the school is going to sort of be And that you know that process creates a dialogue that helps solve some conflicts that are there and then Sets the stage so that when documentation of rights happen, perhaps there's fewer conflicts And that that same program also has built in a whole approach to looking at authority around conflict resolution and trying to Both build into law and practice a way to take traditional and customary means of resolving disputes and link them to the formal judicial system and train the judicial system in that So that you have a better process for effectively resolving disputes It is the 50th anniversary of the land tenure center this year for those of you didn't know I think that's exciting The question about the equities and so can we should we elevate development to Governance and democracy above economics I get this question a lot in one form or another from civil society in particular And I particularly don't like it because I think you can't sort of stop the world and fix one problem You know and then fix the other ones I think what we really have to do is figure out how to move them advance them in tandem and part of that is about paying attention to risks and who the stakeholders are when we go in with these land programs and finding effective ways to deal with those vulnerabilities and those risks and Ensuring that the proper equities are in the dialogue About whether it's large-scale land acquisitions or a titling program If I could just add a couple things. I think Your question gets at a very important point Which is you know this So do we want to pursue property rights purely from the standpoint of maximizing economic growth? Right and the answer is no right What what what our task is about is about providing secure property rights for people on the ground Whether those are group rights whether those are working through the customary system That's that's that's the point Now that said is is that Is that process at odds with economic growth? I think usually not right usually if you can find a way that to to help people resolve land conflicts if you can find a way to You know address these kinds of issues there's going to be an economic growth payoff right people are going to be more secure in their investments and And so on and in terms of the other the other question also as far as thinking about the equities and thinking about these These kinds of issues. I think I don't know if nana is still with us But in fact what her organization does is exactly look at those kinds of things And and I think our experience shows that you if you pay attention to it it's possible to undertake a participatory process of identifying different land uses identifying different perspectives On land uses and land claims and sort of working through those at at a community level and it's not perfect, right? It's never it's never going to be perfect But that's always something that we have in mind when we do this sort of thing and as I said That's what that's what colanda really specializes in is facilitating those kinds of processes Great. Well, we've given you a lead in nana for the final Comment you have the privilege of the last word today Is anything you'd like to add Either in response to the questions you've heard or any final point from how you see things on the ground in in garner Yes, thank you. I'm very sorry, but you know, I I didn't get all the questions so clearly So I only want to hazard any guess But from from the responses given I guess it was this person. I mean the question of what exactly is title and how does title improve and economic life If that is correct, but um from from the answers I think I agree to it the point is We are not just talking about a piece of paper with the name land title Registration. No, we are talking about a kind of documentation that explains The type of ownership That any particular entity be it an individual or a group of people or an organization has In any parcel of land with the parcel Described also we really picture an attack to the agreement So that it becomes binding between the one who have gone in for the parcel and the one giving out the parcel That is it Whether we call it title whether we call it whatever that is what is needed at least so that For the time which the owner is giving out the parcel to the user They will be that understanding that the user has a right to use it for this number of years In gamma we actually are not so much Into discussing what it is about But we are so much into Understanding the fact that if we are able to document what kind of ownership we are talking about It goes a long way to protect the user and that is what it's important for the local level Live living issue that we are talking about. So I like the point that was raised that The aim is not just economic growth But it is about securing property rights for individual for group of people for any entity for the number of years That is guaranteed Again, I am so much in love with the issue that Going through participation It is possible to an S Those rights that are inherent within any society So that you work with those rights and help document those rights For me that is really one of the big things that is influencing how we are making impact in the sector Because many a time We do not we feel that it is a no-go area It's an uncatchable sector that the moment you want to touch that you want extra many ways But that is gone. It's far gone Now we are talking about traditional leaders who are prepared to mobilize their communities To come have a discussion of what rights people have and try to clarify it So spending a bit of time in participatory processes It is really possible to understand What particular types of rights and interests we learn that pertains in any particular area and work with that And that for me is what I think you need to really highlight in our discussions with Donets About interventions in the land sector that it is not just about Doing the quality discussions and legal reforms and things at the national level While those grants that are very important It is very important that we spend time going through these participatory processes To get to the bottom of what type of interests exist and use that to even fashion out very good interventions That is still are made to address issues on the ground and for me that is possible There are many evidence to show that it works and we can go on to use that approach to help Be blind and learn from it Well, thanks very much Nana your love for the subject comes comes across very strongly here in the room I'm afraid we're all out of time now We've really only been able to scratch the surface of this sort of really big and difficult subject But I hope we can have more sessions like this on on on the issue of land but Few will rival this one for the quality of the panelists and the speakers and please join me in thanking everyone for taking part today Thanks very much