LEI Secures a Contract to Manage the Mama Graon – Vanuatu Land Program

The importance of land, its role in custom and the land issues facing the people of Vanuatu were highlighted during a National Land Summit held in 2006. To work towards addressing the issues raised at the Land Summit the Government of Vanuatu requested support from the Australian and New Zealand Governments. LEI have been involved in a number of interim support initiatives through both AusAID and NZAID. Following a bidding process for implementation of the Mama Graon – Vanuatu Land Program , LEI signed a contract with AusAID in December 2010.

According to the World Bank’s Doing Business Report 2011 it takes an average of 81 days to register a property in Malawi. This places Malawi 81 out of 183 jurisdictions for this Doing Business indicator. While this represents an improvement on the 2010 results, the Government of Malawi (GoM) recognizes that continuing modernization of land registration process will act as an incentive to business investment and growth. It will allow those in the real estate market to make decisions and carry through their land transaction intentions promptly and with confidence under the law. Under the auspices of the Business Environment Technical Assistance Programme (BESTAP) the GoM through the Ministry of Industry and Trade is using an ODA grant funds to modernize the current paper based land registration system.

After 9 years and two phases of the Philippines-Australia Land Administration and Management Project LEI have sadly closed the project office on 30 June 2010. Much has been achieved on this project with some of the most notable accomplishments including:

On the 14th and 15th April LEI were involved in organising the first Small Island Developing States (SIDS) Workshop during the Sydney FIG Congress 2010. More than 40 island state representatives from the Pacific, Caribbean and Africa joined fellow international land practitioners to discuss the latest developments and challenges facing land administration and management.

For the past 12 months LEI have been assisting the Government of Yemen to deliver improved land services under a new land agency GALSUP (General Authority for Land Survey and Urban Planning). We assisted the Government of Yemen in formulating a national and local level policy and regulatory framework for public land management, land registration, and urban planning following the consolidation of these activities in GALSUP.

After an extended process of conceptualising, developing, and pilot testing, the Land Governance Assessment Framework (LGAF) in collaboration with the World Bank, is now being rolled out in Benin, Rwanda and Mozambique. A final Economic Sector Work report on LGAF will also be published in the near future by the World Bank.

As LEI’s successful and committed team of national and international staff close project operations of Phase 2 on the Lao Land Titling Project we reflect on the impact of over 15 years of donor assistance.

Hello, my name is Mark Williams. For those that don’t know me I am the latest in a long line of Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development (AYAD) volunteering on the Lao Land Titling Project II. I am a GIS/IT Officer and within my 8 months here in Laos, have been working on a variety of projects with a range of organisations. These include the analysis of Land Use change over 10 years within Vientiane for a GTZ funded research project, conduct training on quality checking the digital cadastre as well as training the trainers at the Polytechnic College in GIS so they will be able to teach it as part of a module within their new Land Administration Degree.

It has been an exciting 6 months for LEI with our strategy to target new projects in Africa starting to come to fruition. We have had two recent project wins in Lesotho being awarded an MCA contract for a Systematic Land Regularisation and Land Allocation Project in July 2009 and being formally notified of our success in bidding for a second project, Modernisation of Land Services and Institutional Strengthening, in August 2009.

LEI have been managing the Land Administration and Management Project (LAMP) for AusAID in the Philippines since 2001. The project has focused on institutional reform, policy development, improving tenure security through land registration, and introducing valuation reform.