Burkina Faso – Rural Land Governance

MCC’s 475 million USD Burkina Faso Compact (2009-2014) funded the 58 million USD Rural Land Governance Project, which aimed to increase investment in land and rural productivity through improved land tenure security and land management. The project facilitated national-level legal reforms, strengthened newly decentralized land administration and land conflict resolution bodies, and conducted site-specific tenure activities to promote land registration. MCC theorized that these activities would lead to decreased land conflict and increased investment in rural areas.

The RLG evaluation sought to assess legal and policy changes and national impacts, document institutional development and performance, and understand the program’s impact on households, particularly around perceptions of land tenure security, land conflicts, investment decisions, and land-use change.

This evaluation utilized a difference-in-differences with matching evaluation methodology to respond to the question “What was the impact of the Rural Land Governance Project on increased land tenure security, investment decisions, and income?” All other evaluation questions were assessed by a performance evaluation using a pre-post methodology. This project is supported by a number of PDRI-DevLab Research Fellows.