WE URGE WBG TO EXTEND SUPPORT ON LAND PLANS
What you need to know:
- The proposed ‘Land Tenure Improvement Project’ does have multiple benefits all round, both short-term and long-term benefits for all stakeholders, ranging from the peasant land owner in rural Tanzania to the government machinery at all administrative level.
Recent reports that the World Bank Group (WBG) – working through one of its arms, the International Development Association – is able, willing and ready to help strengthen Tanzania land administration system is very good news indeed.
Valued at $150 million (about Sh340 billion) – and titled ‘Land Tenure Improvement Project’ (LTIP) – the programme was approved as special project late in 2021 by the World Bank Board of Executive Directors, with the objective of “increasing tenure security for at least two million landholders, users, their families and other dependents” in Tanzania.
For starters LTIP targets 40 districts in 14 administrative regions.
At the end of the day (so to speak), one million Tanzanians will be issued with ‘Certificates of Right of Occupancy’ (CROs), another million with ‘Residential Licences’ (RLs), and 500,000 issued with ‘Certificates of Customary Right of Occupancy’ (CCROs).
Considering that the country continues to be plagued by rapid urbanisation and seemingly incessant land conflict involving different interests – including the interests of crop farmers, livestock herders and potential/prospective investors and gender equality activists – proper and just land administration system that really works on the ground is, indeed, the preferred solution for prudent land planning for better returns.
The proposed ‘Land Tenure Improvement Project’ does have multiple benefits all round, both short-term and long-term benefits for all stakeholders, ranging from the peasant land owner in rural Tanzania to the government machinery at all administrative level.
The benefits include – but are by no means limited to – adding intrinsic value to land as land; drastically cutting down on the incidence of internecine land disputes that have been plaguing us for generations; bolstering and boosting public revenues .
Also, LTRP will make land planning and administration that much easier, including land-related transactions – thereby stimulating and then fuelling Investment in Agriculture no end.
Kudos, WBG for the Land Tenure Improvement Project – and we sincerely hope that the Project will be extended countrywide.
WHY POLICE NEED TO DO MORE
Reports of persons going missing under somewhat mysterious circumstances in Tanzania is becoming common nowadays.
More often than not, this makes parents, relatives, etc., of the missing persons languish in fear, sometimes for days on end.
One recent example of this was reported in these pages yesterday, under the headline ‘Fears ad five go missing for 3 weeks’.
Apparently five young men said to have been traders in the Kariakoo area of the city went missing on December 26 last year when they were to have gone to the Kigamboni Beach for a special party during the festive season.
Earlier reports were that the five young men had been taken into police custody – but for undisclosed reason(s).
Friends and relatives of the five missing persons have searched for them at assorted police stations, hospital wards and morgues, but with nary a success… and their mobile phones are unreachable.
However, when asked about this, the police simply say that they “are investigating the matter” – and urge patience.
Fair enough, we half-heartedly say. But we wholeheartedly wish that the police and other institutions entrusted with the health and safety of Tanzanians would perform better and faster than they have hitherto been doing regarding missing persons.
