LAND-at-scale Mozambique: Scaling community legal literacy, land rights certification and climate resilience

Poverty in Mozambique is concentrated in rural areas and thus associated with a high dependency on agriculture and natural resources, including land. Mozambique has a legal framework recognizing this dependency through a progressive Land Law. However, main obstacles to the proper implementation of the law include the communities’ lack of formalized land tenure, limited knowledge regarding land rights, low participation in decision-making among community members, and a lack of capacity among local government officials. The situation is further hampered by severe impacts from climate change. 

The main objective of the current intervention is to increase community legal awareness and strengthen security of land tenure rights, creating capacity at local level to implement and leverage the progressive provisions of the Mozambican legal framework. The programme will contribute to community preparation to intervene in an informed manner in the land sector and will also contribute to the delimitation of community and individual land-use rights based on good faith occupation and customary rights, and their integration into the formal land system. 

To achieve these objectives, a large-scale campaign will be rolled out, across selected districts from all three regions of the national territory, with two main and interlinked interventions, namely social preparation & legal literacy; and community land rights registration and certification.