Madagascar’s sacred fields
Forgotten land reforms in Madagascar have picked up new steam
Mamy Safidison, 25 years old, and his brother Handry Njarasoa, 26, may not share the same last name—common for siblings in Madagascar—but they do share a piece of land in the village of Merimandroso in the northern highlands of this island nation.
They never doubted their ownership of this plot because their grandfather had carved the Safidison family name on a rock in the family cemetery, indicating that the tomb and one hectare of surrounding rice fields belonged to their clan.
But when the descendants of a former sharecropper went to court to claim it, the brothers travelled to the deeds office in Antananarivo, the capital, and made a startling discovery: their grandfather had registered the land in his name.“In the old days, people trusted each other and everybody knew which land belonged to which family,” Mr Njarasoa says. “So we had no idea there was also a paper,” a title deed.
With the discovery of the long-lost document, the brothers now seem set to win the court case, which has dragged on for three years. Now they appreciate the protection offered by registering land and are planning to obtain deeds for their family’s other rice and vegetable plots in the valley. “But it’s expensive,” Mr Njarasoa says. “It can only be done in…Antananarivo, which is a six-hour bus ride from our village. You have to go to this office four to six times and the whole thing takes at least three months. Only people who have money manage to complete the process.”
Land is sacred in Madagascar. It is much more than fields to grow food, feed the family and earn money. It is the hallowed ground where the ancestors are buried. About every five years, families participate in an ancient ritual known as famadihana, or “the turning of the bones”. They exhume their dead relatives, rewrap them in fresh grave clothes and dance around the tomb.
However, modern life is catching up with the Malagasy farmers. Like the two brothers, they need a certificate to fend off property disputes. As in most poor countries, Madagascar’s land-tenure system is in shambles. Few farmers have clear title to their fields, so they cannot easily sell or use them as collateral to raise loans to purchase machinery and inputs to raise their productivity. For the most part, farmers use land until it is exhausted and then cut down more of the country’s rainforest.
This property problem dates back to 1899, when French colonisers established that only the state could issue land titles. Although during the next 115 years successive governments identified nearly 10m lots, only 500,000 were registered, according to the World Bank. By 2005 an applicant trying to obtain a title had to wait six years on average, complete 24 procedures and spend around $500, two years’ income for the average Malagasy household. The process was so complicated, time consuming and expensive that poor illiterate farmers could not complete it.
For Marc Ravalomanana, president from 2002-2009, this non-registration of land was halting economic growth. A former businessman with a background in dairy farming, he wanted to expand the agricultural sector, but knew that farmers who fear the loss of their land are reluctant to invest in growing more crops.
To strengthen property rights and ease the registration process, the Ravalomanana government established the National Land Programme (or PNF, its initials in French) in 2005. One of its first moves was to decentralise land registration offices with a $110m grant from the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a US aid programme.
Moving the registration process from the capital to local districts made it easier, faster and cheaper for farmers to record their land on the cadastral books. By 2009, 400 out of Madagascar’s 1,500 municipalities had land offices and had issued 75,000 certificates. These documents have the same legal value as traditional land titles and cost $15 each, stillan exorbitant sum in a country where 92% of the citizens live on less than $2 a day. The land boundaries are demarcated after discussions with village elders and local authorities. Often a photograph records the individual lots.
As part of its plan to develop agriculture, the Ravalomanana government also allocated 1.3m hectares of land to South Korean company Daewoo Logistics to produce palm oil and corn for export to Korea. Opposition leader Andry Rajoelina used the plan to stir up public anger, eventually leading to Mr Ravalomanana’s downfall, an army-backed coup inFebruary 2009 and the deal’s rescission.
After Mr Rajoelina’s military takeover, the MCC terminated its compact with Madagascar, leaving the land tenure project far from finished, with limited funding and no political support. “We had 12 major donors before the crisis, and most of them stopped,” says Zo Ravelomanantsoa, project officer with the government land reform programme.“This meant that the new land offices in the municipalities suddenly had to stand on their own feet and function off the fees people paid for registration.” As a result, 8% of the local agents closed their doors, he added.
The World Bank and the French development agency began pilot operations in five municipalities in 2012. The idea was to extend property rights to more people and boost local tax revenues by reducing the certification costs to $2. Seven months later more than 23,000 land certificates had been issued and an additional 471 land offices opened their doors.
The land offices in the municipalities continue to face many challenges: cadastral documents are often out-dated and inaccurate. Sometimes title deeds date back to the 1930s and carry the names of dead relatives, as was the case for the two brothers from Merimandroso. In other instances, several owners may be listed as owning the same plot of land. Often these cases stay unresolved unless one party actively claims the land and sues the other side, again like the brothers’ case.
Land that once belonged to former, often French, early settlers is another point of contention. Since their departure, often generations ago, others have worked their abandoned fields. Under Malagasy law, farmers can claim ownership after working the land for 20 years. Getting title to these lands remains a complicated procedure. Again, it is often the courts that decide.
Even with easier access to land offices and cheaper certificates, in many places only 25% of the land is registered, Mr Ravelomanantsoa says. “Often, the farmers only write down the most important rice fields, but not those that are far away and used to graze the cattle,” he adds.
With a new president, Hery Rajaonarimampianina, sworn in in January 2014, the land reform process may pick up new steam. Mr Ravelomanantsoahopes the new land policy will be written and adopted by February 2015. “We’ve learned from the past,” he says. “In the new policy, we are recommending that the government clearly makes a link between land management and rights registration, considering purposes like mining, environmental protection and farming. This way, it is clear which land can be farmed. We want all concerned sectors to work together. If everyone has easy access to land agencies, there will be better governance. All parties will profit from this.”
