Supporting the Land Tenure Reform - DRCongo

Expected impacts

By enabling sustainable rural development, this project contributed to two significant impacts:

1. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions by enabling and securing small and large investments that involve long land tenure, such as reforestation, plantations and agroforestry. $
2. Improving the population’s living conditions through productive income-generating activities and protecting community lands from land grabs. 

Results achieved (as of 31 December 2023)

• Following the creation, support and mobilization of the National Land Reform Commission (CONAREF) and other experts to refine the project, and after consultations with the 26 provinces on the project, the National Land Policy was developed, validated at national level and adopted by the Government.

• The new Land Tenure Law amending the 1973 law was developed, examined, revised and adopted by the Administrative and Legal Policy (PAJ) commission of the National Assembly, following support for the parliamentary work. What remains is the phase of adoption by the plenary of the Assembly and its second reading in the Senate.

• The different national land stakeholders, including CONAREF, government land agents and local communities, have been strengthened. On the basis of a capacity-building plan for CONAREF, the latter was notably strengthened in terms of administrative management, communication and fiscal capacities, through a procedural manual, a communication plan and a ten-year capacity-building plan for CONAREF provincial coordination. The project has also enabled the establishment of provincial CONAREFs and the construction of new buildings/infrastructures, including information equipment for land administration, to support the pilot implementation of land reform and land tenure security at provincial level.

• As part of the implementation of the land policy, a National Land Plan is currently being validated by a group of experts external to CONAREF, before being submitted to the Council of Ministers.

• Ituri was chosen as one of the pilot areas for land reform support, as the government had already taken steps to address land governance before the project began, notably through the establishment of the Ituri Land Commission. Local land tenure security arrangements were strengthened in Ituri by the creation of a local land committee, the finalization of land information system tools and the validation of local charters, participatory mapping (340 families) and a census (60 individual customary certificates) in the Mambasa pilot site. In addition, the development of an Alternative Conflict Resolution Method (ACRM) in Mambasa has led to the identification and resolution of over 100 land conflicts.

The progress of this project has also been described in the 2021 semestrial publication of the DRC National REDD+ Fund (FONAREDD) – read it here (in French).

Areas of intervention

This project applies to rural land nationally. 

It includes experiments in two pilot REDD+ provinces (Ituri and Mai-Ndombe) and two pilot provinces where external funding supports sectoral and/or enabling activities (Kwilu and Kasaï-Oriental).

Synergies

This project aimed to ensure that the land reform process, as a sectoral and thematic programme, interacts with provincial multi-sectoral programmes (PIREDD) and in other provinces that do not receive CAFI support.  

• The project contributed to the achievement of several milestones of the 2016 Letter of Intent between CAFI and DRC, two of which have been reached: milestone 6a, on CONAREF, and milestone 6b, on the methodological guide.
• The project also supported Intermediate milestone 6c on supporting local communities in implementing application procedures for various sustainable forest management models and in securing land rights, particularly within the framework of multi-sectoral provincial programmes (PIREDDs).
• Two independent verifications of these milestones were undertaken (the report is available here).