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same sense of ownership as freehold property, and the concerns expressed by the Farmers' Union
about government expropriation without due process are reasonable. If the government is to adopt
leaseholds as its main land tenure instrument, then land use regulations and the Land Acquisition Act
need to be carefully rewritten to ensure that landholders do not perceive genuine risk of loss of
property. The resolutions in figure 1.2 are not comforting in this regard. Such resolutions as providing
leaseholds of variable duration in customary areas, making professional land assessments, and
enforcing land use rules act to create insecurity, increase the costs of farming, and create yet more
government bureaucracy in the land market. Eliminating land use conditions, levying an economic
ground rent pegged to market value, and reducing costs in the land market would act to reduce
speculation, increase land utilization, and reduce demands for government oversight of land
use—demands that it likely will never keep due to scarce resources.
It is extremely difficult to estimate the true demand for title as title acquisition in the past was
highly subsidized and linked with free land access—a policy environment conducive for anyone of
sound mind to request land title and a plot of land. Once ground rents are increased nearer to their
economic value and their collections are enforced with penalty of repossession upon default (after 3
years on non-payment), it would be expected that the current demand will be curtailed, and reentries
and surrenders will increase, a process that is already occurring. Nevertheless, demand-size policies
alone will not suffice; it is important to increase the efficiency of survey and registration services
through decentralization and administrative reforms.
The long overdue program of decentralization to the Ndola office and eventually to district
levels would help increase the supply of titles to smallholders and "emerging" small-scale farmers and
help reduce the costs and delays associated with registration at present. The institutional capacity for
land administration (land survey and registry systems) is weak. The current capacity is more or less
the same as that of the pre-independence era when the various ministries had only to deal with the
management of leaseholds on State Lands (6 percent of total land area). The MOL is now being asked
to extend its services to the Reserve and Trust Lands in all nine provinces. Staffing, facilities and
equipment simply are not sufficient for the MOL to expand its scope of operations to the entire
country (yet it is crucial that it does) or to keep pace with the flood of demand for new leaseholds
since independence. Actions will need to be taken to expand the staffing of public sector surveyors,
but there is also a critical need to expand private sector involvement in land surveying. The conference
resolutions again raise a number of concerns about the government's ability to reduce registration
delays. Such resolutions as "consulting all relevant parties prior to undertaking decisions" and
integrating chiefs into land matters, while politically necessary, run counter to the need to reduce steps
and streamline the process. Controls are necessary to ensure customary rights on land held under
customary law, but once land has been identified, the procedure for allocation and registration needs
to be considerably simplified.
In areas with higher population densities and a better-developed transportation network, the
customary tenure system does not appear to be providing the tenure security necessary for long-term
investment. Customary systems seemed to have weakened for three reasons: (1) rising land values,
increased competition for land, and increased rent-seeking by chiefs and others controlling land
allocation; (2) little incentive to make long-term improvements without clearly defined long-term land
use and testacy rights; and (3) increased central government control and reduced powers of local
leaders. While the extension of leasehold tenure is appropriate for these situations, the government
will need to deal with customary land rights outside leasehold areas, and carefully consider how to
minimize overlapping rights and conflicts between the customary and leasehold systems. Conflicts