Description
The overarching objective is to improve food security by providing tools and capacities for sustainable land administration and management at chiefdom, tinkhundla, regional, and national level.
Target groups are the rural poor and women engaged in agriculture on Swazi Nation Land (SNL), and traditional authorities responsible for the administration and governance of SNL.
The technical assistance complements current initiatives pioneered by the MTAD and SWADE for Chiefdom Development Planning, for commercialisation of smallholder agriculture on SNL promoted by MoA, and collaboration with the LMB and traditional authorities on institutional strengthening for land administration and land dispute resolution.
Results achieved by stakeholders with technical assistance support focus on three key areas:
- Tools were developed and are being used in 21 chiefdoms for more efficient land administration of SNL. These tools include data collection and maintenance methods, landholding information and technologies, guidelines and procedures for land administration and mediation tools for land dispute resolution at local level.
- Chiefdoms and national agencies capacitated to use land information and manage SNL more efficiently and sustainably.
- Stakeholders agree on the way forward for the reform of land institution arrangements.
Geographically, result impacts have been achieved at national levels with respect to institutional strengthening and capacity building, whereas the development of appropriate land administration tools has focused on chiefdoms within a pilot area in each of the four regions.
Technical assistance supported the following activities:
- Mapping of land tenure and land use within pilot area chiefdoms, and training on map preparation and interpretation.
- Development of land rights recording systems, providing operational guidelines and user training.
- Systematic collection, processing, quality control and validation of homestead landholding data, creating landholding maps and registers (in both hardcopy and softcopy forms) maintained and used in each chiefdom.
- Sensitising and training for land governance authorities and organisations on collection, management and use of land information.
- Developing and supporting dispute resolution mechanisms at local traditional authority level.
- Develop plans for harmonising and rationalising institutional arrangements for governance of customary tenure (Swazi Nation) land.
The contracting authority is the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development, and funding is provided by the European Union (EuropeAid/136656/IH/SER/SZ) under the land governance and food security thematic programme covering ten African countries. Key internal stakeholders include the Ministry of Natural Resources and Energy (MNRE), Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), Ministry of Tinkhundla Administration and Development (MTAD), Swaziland Water and Agricultural Development Enterprise (SWADE), and the Land Management Board (LMB). Technical assistance support to SLAM is provided by COWI A/S of Denmark in a contrct running from October 2016 to May 2019 (32 months) with an overall budget of EUR 1.678 million.
A mid-term monitoring review in 2017 assessed implementaion of the project as highly satisfactory or satifcatory in 19 of 20 indicators. An end of project evaluation is expected sometime in 2020. Stakeholders expect a similarly positive assessment. As a successful pilot project, stakeholder expectation of further EU support is high; however, funding for roll out using the same approach and methodology to scale up the results to include all 300+ chiefdoms on SNL has yet to be programmed.
Celebrating Successful Completion of the Pilot Project
The Sustainable Land Administration and Management (SLAM) project in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) is one of multiple initiatives of the European Union Land Governance Programme that supports member countries of the African Union to address structural problems of food security.
The objective is to develop, test and provide tools and capacities for sustainable land administration and management at local, regional, and national levels that help rural communities improve their food security. The target groups for this 34-month pilot project are the rural poor and women engaged in agriculture on Swazi Nation Land (SNL), and traditional authorities responsible for the administration and governance of SNL, in four tinkhundla (districts).
Activities and the results achieved by the project, which is supported by a Technical Assistance team provided by COWI A/S of Denmark, focused on three key areas:
- Tools were developed and used for more efficient land administration of SNL. These tools include data collection and information management technologies, landholding maps and registers (in both hardcopy and softcopy) and guidelines and procedures for land administration and dispute resolution that are being used in 21 chiefdoms.
- Pilot area chiefdoms and national agencies capacitated to use land information and manage SNL more efficiently and sustainably.
- Proposals for new institutional arrangements for administration of land (SNL and title deed land) are developed and accepted by stakeholders, including traditional authorities.
Kingdom of Eswatini
