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| Land reform and poverty alleviation in Mozambique
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| 4. Land and poverty alleviation planning in Mozambique |
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Broadly speaking, the issue of land, as an asset for the improvement of a rural livelihood, has not been recognised as occupying a prominent position in poverty alleviation planning and processes. The general view, held by central government poverty programme planners and some donors, is that rich areas of arable land are available in abundance and that farm sizes and productivity have remained low as a result of other constraining factors. In fact the latest draft of the Plan for the Reduction of Absolute Poverty for Mozambique 2001-2005 (PARPA) expresses exactly this at paragraph 43.4: "Land is not, therefore, a limiting factor for poor peasants, but rather their capacity (and therefore means of production) to work the land they have in order to achieve acceptable levels of productivity."
The PARPA does recognise that the issue of tenure security (as opposed to access to land) is of central importance, but tends to do so from the perspective of the need to guarantee private sector concession rights rather than the tenure rights of the poor. For instance, one of the four key strategic objectives within the section of the PARPA devoted to Agriculture and Rural Development is to "guarantee rights of access to land and reduce the bureaucracy associated with land registration". This commitment does not appear to include the registration of the customary rights of the rural poor, however. The general approach of the plan, including the key measures that are to be taken, reveal a far greater concern with security of tenure for the holders of concession units and the creation of an enabling environment for private sector driven rural development.
This is a major theme of the PARPA, which makes explicit this overarching strategic approach in the introductory paragraphs of the document: it is focused on recognising "the crucial importance of medium and long-term measures in the fight against poverty through policies which will support rapid and broad-based economic growth" and developing a "policy and climate which stimulates the private sector to speed up job creation and increase the opportunities for income generation through employment". The issue of tenure security is therefore considered from the private sector perspective rather than as an issue that is important for the rural poor themselves. This is a significant gap in thinking, given that the land policy was a creative attempt to recognise the inherent rights of customary tenure holders and to enable these to contribute to poverty alleviation. It would seem to indicate that the wide range of institutions and stakeholders involved in drafting the land policy have not yet managed to sufficiently articulate the nature and importance of the poverty alleviation aspects of the new approach to tenure recognition and security.
The situation is similar in the conceptualisation of the land component within the public sector investment programme for the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MADER), known as PROAGRI. Here, not only is little attention given to the registration of community use rights as a means to improve the capacity to ‘negotiate’ out of poverty, but there would also appear to be a growing level of government resistance to this aspect of the new policy framework. In the Donor Review meeting of the PROAGRI held in May of 2001 there were clear indications from senior officials that the provisions of the Land Law that are designed to protect community tenure are considered to be obstacles to the objective of attracting capital investment and land development in the rural areas. This view maintains that there are already enough disincentives to rural investment in Mozambique without requiring investors to enter into expensive consultation processes with local communities.
The report on the review of land activities under the PROAGRI carried out in November 2000 by a joint donor-government team, clearly articulated a view that to date the important focus in respect to land and poverty alleviation had been on the development of an appropriate legal and regulatory framework. At the same time, however, it contained an implicit recognition of the fact that the PROAGRI had yet to realise a clear, comprehensive and implementable plan for the new land policy and that support in meeting this challenge was clearly needed. As well as making the point that there were important areas of governance and institutional support that fell outside of PROAGRI, the report makes clear also that the land component of the PROAGRI has tended to receive less attention than other areas of action. Both central and provincial budgets developed by the implementing institutions in the land sector have suffered from the "harmonisation" with other components; that is, they have received consistently smaller allocations when it has come to dividing the overall budget.
More recent statements by the Mozambican government have reflected growing support for the privatisation of land rights, which has been supported by certain foreign donors. To date it appears that there is no clear strategy articulated for privatisation. The granting of land concession applications under present conditions has made privatisation inevitable and possibly is desirable not only for larger investors but also for the rural poor. However the nature and timing of a privatisation process could impact positively or negatively on economic development and poverty alleviation in rural areas. Wholesale privatisation of existing land concessions in a short time period would lead to the consolidation of land rights of the significantly large number of land speculators, many of whom acquired these rights without proper procedures being followed, without sufficient capital and with very few economic benefits for rural communities within which the land concessions fall. Preferable would be the development of a strategy for the gradual privatisation of land rights which identifies serious investors and which maximises the benefits for rural communities. Such a strategy should include more rigorous assessment of the business plans of land concession applications and the reduction or cancellation of land concessions which do not realise their business plans in the time period stipulated (two years for foreigners and five years for Mozambicans) or which have not paid all their taxes. The existing provision allows for the issuing of titles after the stipulated time period which would allow for a gradual privatisation of land in which the economic benefits for the rural poor and the state would be maximised.
Notwithstanding the existence of plans within the land component of PROAGRI relating to the registration of community land rights it is true to say that the only initial experiences of this approach have come through the intervention of organisations and donors outside of the PROAGRI framework. The aim of the rest of this paper is to describe some of these initial experiences, with a particular focus on the land component of the Zambйzia Agricultural Development Programme (ZADP) supported by DfID. It attempts to highlight some of the major lessons that have been learned and to describe the challenges that are faced in implementing the law. We examine the prospects for the realisation of the poverty alleviation objectives within the policy and present some strategic options for the future development of the land reform programme in Mozambique.
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