Environmental and Gender Impacts of Land Tenure Regularization in Africa

[Abstract] Although recent developments greatly increased interest in African land tenure, few models to address these issues at the required scale have been identified or evaluated. Rwanda’s nation-wide land tenure regularization programme is of great interest. A discontinuity design with spatial fixed effects that is used to evaluate the pilot for this programme points to three main effects; namely, (i) improved land access for legally married women and better recordation of inheritance rights; (ii) significant and large investment impacts that are particularly pronounced for women; and (iii) a reduction in land market activity rather than distress sales. Implications for programme design and policy are discussed.

This study has been prepared within the UNU-WIDER project on Land Inequality and Decentralized Governance in LDCs, directed by Pranab Bardhan and Dilip Mookherjee.