In much of the world, it isn’t even clear who owns what land. Few people have titles to their land, even when they have lived on it for generations.
That lack of clear ownership discourages improvements. Farmers can’t obtain a mortgage to improve their land, because they can’t prove to the bank that the land they farm is theirs. If they do manage to greatly improve their land, they may lose it to someone who covets it, which is a disincentive to improve it.
But some countries are finally addressing the problem, by ensuring that people have title to the land they live and farm on.
“With financing from the World Bank, the government of the Ivory Coast has accelerated title deed delivery, quintupling the number of formal titles granted to landowners since the initiative began in 2018. The effort is intended to reduce land disputes and strengthen property rights—a prerequisite for sustained economic development,” reports The Doomslayer.
The World Bank adds:
Secure land tenure transforms dormant assets into active capital—unlocking access to credit, encouraging investment, and spurring entrepreneurship. These are the building blocks of job creation and economic growth.
When landowners have secure property rights, they invest more in their land. Existing data shows that with secure property rights, agricultural output increases by 40% on average. Efficient land rental markets also significantly boost productivity, with up to 60% productivity gains and 25% welfare improvements for tenants…
The Government of Côte d’Ivoire [Ivory Coast] has dramatically accelerated delivery of formal land records to customary landholders in rural areas by implementing legal, regulatory, and institutional reforms and digitizing the customary rural land registration process, which is led by the Rural Land Agency.
This has enabled a five-fold increase in the number of land certificates delivered in just five years compared to the previous 20 years…
Over the next four years…Côte d’Ivoire aims to deliver an additional 500,000 certificates and 250,000 formal contracts benefiting an estimated 6.2 million people across half the country.
Since 2012, Ivory Coast (also known as Côte d’Ivoire) has experienced some of the fastest economic growth in the world, often over 8% per year. It has less oppressive regulation of business and employment decisions than most African nations, making it a potential place to invest. Most people in the country have access to electricity today, unlike in 2011.
But Ivory Coast continues to face problems. Its judiciary is slow and ineffective. It has a lot of corruption. And while its economy is growing quickly, its national debt is growing rapidly, too, with its budget deficit averaging 5.6% of its economy over the last three years.
Before its civil wars in 2002-2011, Ivory Coast had a lot of tourism — it was once known as the “Paris of Africa.” But even after its civil war ended, tourism didn’t return to previous levels. Soon, however, it may eradicate malaria from many areas, making it a more attractive tourist destination. (People don’t directly catch malaria from each other, but “People with untreated or inadequately treated malaria may spread infection to a mosquito that bites them. These infected mosquitoes can in turn spread the disease by biting and infecting healthy people.“).
Last year, the Ivory Coast became the first country to officially deploy the R21 vaccine, a new and powerful weapon against malaria.
