ABSTRACTTHE CHALLENGES AND EFFECTS OF AGRARIAN REFORM IN AFRICA: EVIDENCE FROM RURAL MOZAMBIQUEBYRaul Oscar Raul PitoroLand has long been a focus of struggle between different parts of Mozambican society, and although the Government has embraced a more liberal and market oriented development model, poverty rates are still high. The size of landholdings are small and decreasing and the performance of the land administration system is low and even with empirical evidence showing a positive correlation of the size of landholdings with income (Walker et al., 2004; Jayne et al., 2003), there has been little consideration of landholdings as a potential cause of the stagnant agricultural growth. Therefore, understanding the relationship between landholdings and poverty as well as the relationship between the structure of the land administration system and its performance make three important contributions to the debate on the effect of land reforms to economic development: (1) as policy recommendations on the importance of landholdings in the national development program for poverty reduction; (2) as a basis for developing future development strategies on pathways out of poverty; and (3) as policy recommendations on how to improve the land administration system.This dissertation tackles these issues in three complementary essays, which aim to: (1) understand the nature and magnitude of the effect of landholdings on income and poverty in the context of rural Mozambique; (2) assess the pathways out of poverty and distinction between chronic and transitory poverty, and most importantly the effects of the size of the landholdings on the ability of people to move out of poverty which has an important interest for policymakers; and (3) understand how to improve land administration system in Mozambique. The main conclusions of this study are: First, the incomes and poverty were found to have infrastructural, demographic, asset and technological dimensions and increased the cultivated land was found to be raising rural household incomes. Unlike earlier studies, results show that the pathways out and into poverty are more structural (productive asset and production technologies) than demographic confirming the argument that the initial asset distribution is important in pro-poor growth. Second, 66 percent of poverty is transient and 34 percent in chronic and unlike most of earlier studies, the determinants of chronic and transient poverty are not congruent, however, policies to address chronic poverty can as well tackle the transient poverty. Third, the performance of land administration system in Mozambique in general and specifically in Southern region is a function of its structure as measured by indicators of concentration, fragmentation, and power difference. Higher authority level involved in processing land use rights applications is more efficient than the lower levels. Fourth, the policy implications from this study include: promoting agricultural technologies, rural financial services and microcredit, risk coping strategies through establishment development of drought resistant crop varieties; small and medium enterprises; facilitating access to input and output markets through improving and expanding infrastructures and public services and implementing land reforms conducive to in increased landholdings to ensure income generation. The large competition among clients and high concentration of land administration units increase the performance, therefore decentralization of land administration units to lower geographical units as well as the improvement in data capturing, recording, and keeping are recommended.
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