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below suggest the conversion of all 14-year leases to 99-year leases. A proposal for 30-year leases
does not go far enough.
VIII. Land management principles: plan and market
Zambia's land management style has been that of a planned economy with direct administrative
control, rather than through managed markets and control of land use through regulation as in market
economies. It has involved state ownership of land; administrative rather than market determination
of land allocation; reliance upon development conditions; restrictions on transactions; and undervaluing
of land in the context of both transactions and taxation. These policy decisions have impoverished
Zambia's public sector and undermined development in its private sector. The government has denied
itself income from the country's most valuable resource—land. The MOL, anxious for donor
assistance, has failed to generate the revenues that could easily have come from land. Ground rents
are uneconomic and not regularly collected. Land is allocated for nominal amounts.
There is substantial evidence that the current system is not allocating land to those who will
use it efficiently. The MAFF/World Bank 1993 evaluation of use levels on State Land found 652,000
hectares underutilized, of which 60 percent (400,000 hectares) is good arable land (see chapter 1). It
found that 150,000 hectares are available from the state farm and parastatal sector, between 100,000
and 200,000 from privately owned farms, and substantial unutilized land from the settlement sector.
An examination of the state of use of Reserve/Trust Lands recently allocated under leasehold might
reveal even higher levels of underutilization.
Many allocations have been requested purely for status and speculation, and development
conditions have failed to prevent holders from keeping the land idle. In light of the experience of other
countries with such conditions, this is hardly surprising. It is important that attempts to encourage land
development shift from reliance on a development-condition approach to reliance on economic
incentives, creating economic costs for land that make it disadvantageous to hold land without
developing it.
It is equally important to reestablish public confidence in the probity of the MOL. As in any
system which allocates a scarce and valuable good for free or nearly free, opportunities for corruption
abound. Not surprisingly, it is popularly believed that favoritism, abuse of insider information, and
the acceptance of bribes are rife in the MOL. Officials of other government agencies which act on
behalf of the ministry at local levels are subject to similar temptations.
Clearly one of the most fundamental requirements of reform is the recognition of the value
of land. This must be done through the expansion of the role of market forces rather than through
administratively set prices. Government must make land available for economic cost and allow the
market a major, if not necessarily exclusive, role in determining its distribution. Constraints on the
market, such as restrictions on subdivision, must be removed.
IX. Problems of confidence and vision: Trust and Reserve Lands
If the problems of the State Land are considerable, it is relatively easy to see the directions
that must be taken. It is land policy with respect to Reserve and Trust Lands that is most genuinely