Does Smallholder Land Titling Facilitate Agricultural Growth?: An Analysis of the Determinants and Effects of Smallholder Land Titling in Zambia

Abstract

Zambia’s land policies privilege agricultural land alienation by wage earners over local smallholder farmers. As a result, land title holders are not statistically significantly different from non-title holders in terms of agricultural productivity, despite greater access to investment capital from wage earnings and higher levels of education. The effects of land titling on long- and medium-term land investments are also limited. These results are indicative of widespread speculative alienation of agricultural land by wage earners. Enabling more productive land users to acquire title requires policy change aimed at lowering the transaction costs and bureaucratic complexity of acquiring land title.