Affordable land registration for cacao-producing rural farming communities in Côte d’Ivoire

General

Meridia Land B.V. has developed a mobile cloud-based platform including services that documents the land use and rights of small farmers in developing countries. Such a document is also useful for farmers to get a loan from the bank and farmers are more willing to invest in their land and improve the quality and quantity of their production.Côte d'Ivoire, together with Ghana, produces the most cocoa; 70% of the global cocoa volume. Much of this cocoa is supplied by small farmers, who hardly have anything on paper about their piece of land. Land documentation is still a long, bureaucratic, inefficient and costly procedure in Côte d'Ivoire. Meridia wants to help farmers by offering an affordable (40 to 60% cheaper) and fast alternative to register their land in order to acquire official ownership.Meridia is in contact with three major international agri-food processors: Hershey, Barry Callebaut and Unilever, who purchase cocoa from approximately 80,000 farmers in Côte d'Ivoire. The three multinationals want to improve their social impact and are willing to invest in land documentation for "their" farmers, however they are confronted with the complexity of land rights and do not know exactly where to start. They have expressed their interest in Meridia's technology and hope to be able to directly support at least 80,000 cocoa farmers with land documentation in the coming years. A feasibility study is needed, among other things, to investigate what the price could be for the farmers, what the technical requirements are, but also to further map out the opportunities and challenges. In addition, an extensive analysis of the local context will be made in order to fully meet the requirements or wishes of the three customers. During the study, a small pilot will also be conducted in which Meridia's model will be tailored to the cultural, political and institutional conditions.