In Ethiopia, rural households usually manage various spatially separated tiny land parcels with an average size of between 0.15 and 0.5 hectares. Cultivating small, irregular, and scattered parcels is highly inefficient and is associated with additional transportation and labour costs. Moreover, frag-mented landholding hinders mechanisation, negatively affecting productivity and agricultural devel-opment.
The Ethiopian government encourages farmers to voluntarily exchange and consolidate parcels to create larger and more compact land holdings. However, to date, there are no clear legal frameworks to govern the design and implementation of participatory land consolidation. There is also a knowledge gap concerning participatory land consolidation processes and safeguarding measures to protect marginalised groups.
The project is creating the necessary precondition to implement participatory land consolidation (LC) procedures.
In cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture and regional and local Land Administration Bureaus in the Amhara and Sidama National Regional States, responsible land management practices are pro-moted by:
• Piloting the preparation of locally adapted land consolidation and testing other instruments to tackle land fragmentation
• Developing manuals and procedures to replicate learning experiences from piloting and to enhance technical capacities of relevant authorities and land administration experts
• Improving the legal and institutional framework to foster good land governance and main-stream land consolidation efforts at the national level.