Land Tenure, Land Markets, and Institutional Transformation in Zambia

The Government of Zambia is embarking on an ambitious program of legal and administrative reforms in land policy. Although the need to liberalize the land market is universally shared, the ideas on how to accomplish this transformation are not. Two decades of underinvestment in field research have resulted in the present situation of micro-level data on land tenure and farm-level production, consumption, and resource management inadequate to guide policy decisions. This report was prepared to help assess the state of knowledge and identify important land policy issues as a foundation for recommending future research directions and to facilitate informed policymaking. Some will feel that the current state of research is adequate and that the report does not go far enough with policy advice. Others will disagree with the level and nature of policy recommendations that are given. Should this report have erred in either direction, it is due to the very difficult task of finding the appropriate balance, rather than
to any willful decision by the research team.