Preface
The Government of Zambia is embarking on an ambitious program of legal and administrative
reforms in land policy. Although the need to liberalize the land market is universally shared, the ideas
on how to accomplish this transformation are not. Two decades of underinvestment in field research have
resulted in the present situation of micro-level data on land tenure and farm-level production,
consumption, and resource management inadequate to guide policy decisions. This report was prepared
to help assess the state of knowledge and identify important land policy issues as a foundation for
recommending future research directions and to facilitate informed policymaking. Some will feel that the
current state of research is adequate and that the report does not go far enough with policy advice. Others
will disagree with the level and nature of policy recommendations that are given. Should this report have
erred in either direction, it is due to the very difficult task of finding the appropriate balance, rather than
to any willful decision by the research team.
The research was carried out between September 1993 and March 1994 with funding from the
US Agency for International Development (USAID) in Lusaka. Further comments and suggestions were
incorporated between March and September 1994. An action plan for land tenure and administrative
reforms based on these research findings was developed in close collaboration with the Ministry of Lands
(MOL) and is contained in a follow-up document entitled "Land Reform and Institutional Transformation
in Zambia: Recommendations for Policy Change" (July 1994). That action plan has now been
incorporated into a master planning document for the MOL, and its recommendations are under review
by USAID/Zambia for possible financial support.
As will be seen, many Zambian authors have made important technical contributions through their
respective chapters and more generally to the report. The Land Tenure Center (LTC) is grateful for their
support and that of the staff of the MOL who so generously gave their time in responding to the many
questions and calls for data. Important comments on the report were also received from the land
committee (S.P. Mulenga, T. Bull, L. Handahu, S.M.J. Zaloumis, and T.H. Phiri), David Straley of
USAID, the Overseas Development Agency, G.H. Sichalwe of the Department of Resettlement, and
various senior officers in the Central Statistics Office. The authors would also like to gratefully
acknowledge those people who willingly gave interviews or assisted with the analysis. Special thanks are
due David Musona, who managed in-country travel, banking, and other logistics, and Jane Dennis and
Steven Smith, who spent considerable time on editing and assembly. There are no doubt many
knowledgeable individuals in Zambia who should have been contacted for contributions but were not. If
research deficiencies have resulted, we can only hope that such an oversight can be corrected in future
research endeavors.
Michael Roth
Project Director
20 September 1994
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