When supporting implementation of a partner government’s land sector reform, MCC should ensure that the government’s implementation includes ongoing messaging and engagement with key stakeholders. The Government of Burkina Faso’s 2009 Rural Land Law was the result of wide stakeholder engagement and built on an earlier adopted Rural Land Policy and included a final clause calling for participatory review of the law’s implementation experience after a period of 5 years. The intent of the law, and of MCC’s investment in the implementation of the law, was to provide legal recognition of decentralized land governance and legal standing to commune- and village-level decision-making around land matters. The evaluation’s findings suggest perceptions that the new commune-level and village-level land institutions called for in the Rural Land Law are competing with traditional, customary authorities and institutions. Additionally, the evaluation found that large landholders in treatment communes were significantly more likely to experience improved perceptions of tenure security, which implies that formal institutions could have indeed functioned as intended for one subpopulation (large landholders) but did not displace traditional institutions for the majority of respondents. The lesson for MCC and for governments embarking on land tenure reform processes in general is to ensure careful consideration and ongoing stakeholder engagement and messaging around the expected relationship of existing customary authority to land management entities newly named in law. Since the development of the project and start of implementation in 2009, MCC has addressed this lesson by updating the compact and threshold program development process to include routine political economy and stakeholder analyses where land sector institutional reform investments are under consideration.
Lesson Learned