The Provincial Geographic and Cadastral Services (SPGC) are responsible for processing land concession applications and community land registrations. Their key responsibilities include the maintenance of proper cadastral records, ensuring compliance to the Land Law, the provision of technical services and the collection of land use taxes.
Two important issues, integrally linked, remain to be resolved within the sphere of public sector administration of land rights. The first relates to the need for a comprehensive restructuring and change management process that will more clearly define the respective roles of the various state entities (at the provincial, district and locality level) and the private sector in the provision of core services. The second involves the tricky issue of capacity. Once clarity is obtained regarding the first issue it will be possible to more clearly identify the exact nature and extent of the capacity problem. Although there is a Ministry-wide restructuring process currently being implemented, there is little evidence yet of any major shifts in land rights administration and the SPGC remain without a clear strategic vision on their future development as a government service.
Two major constraints facing the SPGC in Zambйzia, and applicable to most of the other provincial offices, are a lack of human resources and extremely limited access to transportation, restricting their ability to effectively cover all of the tasks consigned to them by the law. The SPGC in Zambйzia have a total of 20 staff for the province, recently bolstered by the arrival of three additional staff members with ‘superior technician’ qualifications (including the new provincial Head of Services). However, of the remaining staff, only 3 are ‘medium level’ technicians, a further 10 have ‘basic level’ technical qualifications and the rest are drivers and administrative staff. Presently, the staff is expected to perform a wide range of activities in relation to the land law and regulations. Technicians may be expected to be surveyors, convenors of meetings, facilitators of community processes, to resolve conflicts and negotiate agreements. However, no comprehensive audit of required and existing skills has been undertaken and in many cases the staff are untrained to meet the expectations of their roles. The management of tax revenues, for example, presents a particular challenge in the absence of trained accountants.
At district level the capacity problem is more acute. The offices of the District Administrations are required to play an active role in providing opinions on land concession applications, investigating the implementation of development plans, prioritising the delimitation of community land, verifying the quality of community consultations in the processing of land concession applications and in the mediation of conflicts. The District Directorates of Agriculture are the principal district level government agencies involved in land registration and have significantly less skilled personnel available in comparison to the SPGC.
A number of NGOs are active in the province but very few are involved in providing assistance to communities regarding land rights registration. The role of the private sector is generally limited. Text Box 3 (below) provides an overview of the institutions and organisations involved in land registration activities in the province.
A key challenge for the future will be to strengthen and diversify the role of private sector agencies, NGOs and other civil society organisations in land registration, especially in community land registration and community consultation for the approval of land concessions. The PROAGRI Joint Land Mission also highlighted this point in their report, emphasising that "resources to consolidate and expand [work done to date on delimitation processes] are now essential within the context of PROAGRI on the one side, and within the context of support to NGOs and civil society on the other". The report also states that "the Mission finds that there is great potential in the idea of developing (and regulating where appropriate) partnerships between the public sector and other institutions, including private firms and NGOs, that have the technical skills and experience required to carry out a range of land related tasks (including delimitations, consultations, GPS surveys and mapping). Partial outsourcing might help to solve the essential problem of low capacity" (our emphasis in both quotes).
Although DINAGECA has encouraged this development for surveying activities in Maputo and Gaza provinces, investigations into the extent to which other areas of work might be similarly outsourced have been limited.
The challenge will be to ensure that, where possible, resources are made available in a way that encourages a collaborative approach by government, NGOs and private sector agencies and has a definite impact on the tenure rights of communities. In the particular case of delimitation exercises (as distinct from advocacy activities, information dissemination, legal defence of rights, etc) it is suggested here that one avenue through which the necessary resources could be made available would be through the establishment of a funding mechanism that enables the communities to ‘purchase’ the services they need from NGOs, companies and/or the government.
The PROAGRI has also been beset by problems with financial planning and the timely flow of finances to the SPGC offices. On only one occasion in the last two years were the provincial land services in Zambйzia able to quickly and efficiently access PROAGRI finances and this only during a period of intense political pressure from the Ministry regarding the large backlog of unprocessed concession applications. In addition it is widely recognised that the annual plans for the land component within PROAGRI are somewhat removed from the reality of the actual work programmes. In Zambйzia, for example, two of the three major activities contained within the 2000 PROAGRI budget for the provincial land services were completely unrealised at the end of the year, except to the extent that these had been planned, budgeted for and realised under the separately funded ZADP land programme . A detailed analysis of the budget lines reveals a large number of activities, costed in excess of $US40,000, which were similarly unrealised and for which no implementation plans were ever developed.
Text Box 3: Other agencies involved in land registration in Zambйzia
- ORAM
The Association for Rural Mutual Help (Associaзгo Rural de Ajuda Mъtua - ORAM) has been centrally involved in the dissemination of information on the land law, the identification of communities who wish to register their land and the provision of facilitation services for community land delimitation. ORAM is currently the only NGO in Zambйzia that is directly involved in the delimitation of community land rights. Most of the services provided by the ORAM involve assistance to the community in the election of representative structures, in the carrying out of participatory planning and mapping exercises and in the required liaison with government structures.
ORAM has a staff of about 78 and has a presence in 11 of the 16 districts in the province. Relative to the SPGC, ORAM have access to considerable human, transport and financial resources.
- DFID and other donors
The largest funding partner for land registration in the province is the British Government’s Department for International Development (DfID) which has provided most of its funding support for land registration through World Vision’s Zambйzia Agricultural Development Project (ZADP). Through ZADP, DFID has provided approximately 42% of the ORAM budget and 80% of the SPGC budget during 2000. SPGC has also received some financial support from ASDI (Sweden) through DINAGECA and from other donor agencies through PROAGRI. 8 funding partners (since 1998) have supported ORAM in Zambйzia and the finances available through grant funding amounts to almost US$2 million over the period 1999 - 2002.
- ZADP Land Component (World Vision)
The main goal of the Land Tenure Component is to increase security of tenure for rural communities in Zambйzia, by supporting the implementation of the new Land Law and the registration of land rights of rural communities. Activities of the project have included information dissemination on the Land Law, the development of systems and procedures for delimiting and registering the land of rural communities, training in social facilitation processes and GPS surveying techniques, the development of planning and cooperation between government and NGOs and research into conflicts and the potential establishment of partnerships between investors and communities.
- Other NGOs
Other NGOs in the province appear to have played a limited role in relation to land rights work, often referring to the fact that ORAM is already engaged on this. Some have commented on the complexity of land issues and the need to leave it to specialised organisations, but this may also be a reflection of the general weakness of most other indigenous NGOs in the province. The Nъcleo Estudo de Terra (NET) and other centres based at the University of Eduardo Mondlane i Maputo have provided training and research support.
- Private Sector
Some private sector consultancy companies operate in the province and others that are based in Maputo carry out a range of services for government, NGOs or companies. These are largely focused on socio economic and baseline survey work and specialist sector studies. Certain freelance consultants have provided research support, usually employed through NGO project funding. There are no private companies that are able to offer surveying and mapping services.
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