LIFT aims to improve the incomes of the rural poor in Ethiopia through improved land tenure security and addressing the constraints faced by the rural poor to access markets.

The programme aims to achieve this through three components:

1 Land certification of 14 million parcels to increase security of tenure

2. Developing an electronic rural land registry to record rural land transactions

3.Improving the rural land market using a market systems approach to ensure that the rural poor can leverage the economic benefits of increased tenure security

LIFT is a £68.2 million six-year project financed by DFID. Nathan has been contracted to implement the third component of this project (£10 million value).

This component aims to improve the way the poor (especially women and youth) participate in and benefit from the rural land market in a systemic and sustainable manner by improving the mechanisms that will allow farmers with land certificates to invest more on their land, further increasing their productivity levels and raising their incomes.

It aims to achieve this by operating in several areas:

• Improving the functioning of the rural land rental market to make rental allocation of land more efficient by promoting the development of rural land brokers, building the capacity of stakeholders to understand their rights and obligations, and supporting women and youth to ensure that they are given the opportunity to rent in/out their land fairly.
• Increasing access to finance. This includes facilitating the introduction of innovative collateral systems for MFIs to increase access to credit in rural areas, supporting the development of savings instruments, and supporting the development of a weather index-based insurance scheme.
• Enhancing agriculture practices to improve access to input and output markets. For example, Nathan works closely with input producers specialized on green inputs to establish a distribution network in rural areas so that farmers gain access to their products and build the capacity of agro-retailers so they can train farmers on the right use and application of the various inputs.
• Addressing key land policy and institutional issues, focusing on supporting the adaptation of proclamations, regulations, strategies, and plans to allow for development of the land rental market.

More specifically, we are using research and other evidence to influence policy making in rural land tenure.