Evaluation of Sida’s Land Administration Initiative

Through the initiative of the Environmental Protection, Land Administration and Use Authority (EPLAUA) of Amhara a collaborative programme was started in 2004 with the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden within the ongoing Sida-Amhara Rural Development Program (SARDP). The programme had two phases with Phase I covering July 2007 – March 2009 and Phase II covering December 2009 – March 2014. Before the start of Phase II, an in-depth review of Phase I was carried out and the programme document for Phase II was revised.

The ultimate development objective of the establishment of the Institute of Land Administration is to improve the life conditions of many poor by a land administration and tenure system that indirectly will support food security and poverty reduction. The immediate objective was changed when the programme document was revised and was then stated: “To support the development of ILA to be well-known and recognized for its excellence in Ethiopia, and in East Africa”. The programme has the following outputs:
Output 1 Trained and well qualified practitioners and a qualified education system
Output 2 Teaching and research capacity of ILA further developed
Output 3 Infrastructure of good African standard established
Output 4 Institute of Land Administration effectively managed
Output 5 New curricula for new programmes developed and existing curriculum reviewed
Output 6 Research system developed
Output 7 The cross-cutting issues of gender, HIV/AIDS and environmental considerations mainstreamed

After the start-up of the BSc program in Land Administration in 2006, covering four main themes: geomatics/ surveying, economics, law and land administration. ILA has expanded, today offering training on BSc level in Architecture since 2011 and in Surveying and Geo-informatics since from 2013, as well as on MSc level in Land Administration Management since 2012. Besides the full-time students, ILA also offers other opportunities to study such as participation in distance, evening and summer courses. ILA is also known for carrying out applied research and for offering consultancy services in a broad area of expertise.

Sida commissioned an assessment of the impacts and outcomes of its existing programmes and projects to be able to strategically further strengthen or build on previous initiatives to assure efficiency and sustainability.
The main purpose of the evaluation of the long term Sida support to ILA/BDU was to assess the impacts and outcomes of the programme. The evaluation was expected to provide Sida and ILA/BDU with lessons learnt that can be used mainly for future designing of support within the field of land administration in Ethiopia in general. It should also identify areas or themes where minor short term inputs may be useful or even necessary to sustain or bring ILA to full maturity as proposed in the draft Completion Report. The evaluation focused on Output 1 and the contributing Outputs to that output i.e. Outputs 2-8, except Output 6 which had not progressed far enough to be evaluated. The evaluation of Output 1 was based on the Tracer Study (April 2013) of the students done by ILA/BDU. The findings and recommendation were to guide ILA to further develop and improve on the teaching and research capacity of ILA (Output 2).