Urban Land Policy and Access to Land for Low Income People in Nifas Silk Lafto Sub-city Administration: Problems and Way Forward
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Date
2011-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The operation of the urban land market has been identified as a significant obstacle preventing
the urban poor from accessing affordable land. Even successful market developments could not
distribute land to the poor and intervention in the land market is, therefore, required to promote
more equitable land di stribution. Goverr1l11ents design land policies to indicate how land and the
resources available from land is di stributed to their population. The study on urban land policy
and access to land for low income people in Nifas Si lk Lafto Sub-city Administration was
designed identify the land lease policy problems and indicate way forward to enable the poor to
access land along with the fierce completion for land. The current land lease regulation of Addis
Ababa has mainly focused on land delivery system of auction while the 48 .5% population that
can be categorized under the low income population could not participate in the competition for
land, due to low economic capacity. The study depicted that given the existing low economic
standard of the target popul ation, there is a need to introduce protection mechanisms to create
conducive conditions in access to land for the poor. This necessitates a wide regional dialogue on
the cu rrent land lease policy to improve land delivery systems without significantly affecting the
land policy at national level. The survey made at Dertu area indicated that about 50.9% of the
informal settlers purchased land in black market. Unless alternative land delivery modalities are
r introduced, the poor never stops purchasing land in black market as shelter is a basic necessity.
The ci ty government has to work on reshaping this market and bring it to light in such a way that
income is accrued through channeling it in to formal land lease system.
Since there is discrepancies between the need of the population and the land del ivery modalities,
comprehensive discussio ns and policy dialogues of the public is recommended to provide land at
separate area free of competition for the poor at the bench mark price set by the City
Admini stration Land Lease Board . Increasing land supply to stabil ize land market, which is
sati sfying only 10.2% of the demand, was ind icated as a so lution to improve the land access
problem of the population. Minimizing the eviction of the poor and adapting plans to local needs
and capacity were taken as an alternative. Introducing pro-poor land management system and
protection mechanisms to the level conducive to the poor without significantly affecting the
policy at national level is recommended as a solution to improve land access problems currently
prevailing in the city.
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Access to Land for Low Income People