Ivory Coast: The implementation of the law relating to the rural land domain / ownership law
Jean-Philippe Lestang, David Loue, Gerard Paillat, Franck-Yves Dabin
Confronted with the growth of land conflicts in the Rural Land Area and aware of the need to find sustainable solutions to the management of rural land, the State of Côte d'Ivoire has passed Law No. 98-750 of 23 December 1998 relating to rural land. For various reasons mainly related to the political instability experienced by the country from 2000 to 2010, the implementation of this law started very slowly, but it has now become a priority of the government's rural development policy; and that is notably translated into the creation of the Rural Land Agency (AFOR). The main purpose of the Rural Land Law is to legalize the holding of customary rights on rural land through the issuance of land certificates following an official survey. In recent years, the implementation of this law has entered a phase of significant scope both qualitatively and quantitatively. The main issues that arose in applying this law were: - The ability of applicants to apply, including non-indigenous, women and non-Ivorian - the good co-ordination of all the actors intervening in the course of a procedure of apparently complex investigation under the coordination of the departmental director of agriculture and the president of the rural land management Committee (the sub-prefect), - the administrative capacity to perform these functions, particularly those of the investigation commissioner, and the management of the computerized rural land management system (SIF), - the ability of technical operators to control their operations under satisfactory cost and completion conditions, - obtaining a good adherence to the operation confirmed by the existence of a low rate of litigation, that is to say a high rate of issuance of land certificates compared to requests. This document aims to provide answers to these questions through the professional experience (feedback) of a technical operator in his intervention for the issuance of land certificates. According to the law, the technical operator is an authorized surveyor or a land works firm associated with an authorized surveyor. This paper relates to the activities of GEOFIT / CETIF / Cabinet Kouamélan. GEOFIT is a company of studies and topographic and land works in Nantes, in France, and having a recognized international experience. CETIF and Cabinet Kouamélan are institutions of study and topographic works and partner land in Abidjan in Ivory Coast. It should be noted that this professional experience predates the creation and establishment of the Rural Land Agency (AFOR) which will result in significant improvements in the implementation of the procedures for applying the Rural Land law.
Event: Land Governance in an Interconnected World_Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty_2018
Only personal, non-commercial use of this document is allowed.