Ethiopia's Joint Land Certification Programme for Women's Land Rights

Starting in 1998, Ethiopia rolled out low-cost rural land certification that, from 2003-2005 onward, issued joint land certificates bearing both spouses' names and photographs rather than the household head alone, eventually covering 15-30 million parcels nationally.

Muchomba (2017) found perceived land tenure security among women was only 4% in Tigray (head-of-household-only certification) versus 22-30% in regions with joint certification, and linked joint certification to a 33% increase in household health spending. Deininger, Ali and Alemu found land-related court cases fell from about 20 to as few as 2 per week at one East Gojjam site after certification. A 2019 review of 7.1 million LIFT-certified parcels found 77% listed women as joint (55%) or individual (22%) landholders.

Bezabih and Holden (2010) found certification's productivity gains were substantial for male-headed households but only modest for female-headed ones; UN Women's 2022 review cautions that titling alone does not lead to greater tenure security for women, and the LIFT programme had to intervene to return over 1,000 parcels to women and vulnerable groups whose rights were violated even after certification.