1. Plan Foncier Rural Impact evaluation
Katherine Mark (Urban Institute/ NORC)
Annette Richter (MCC Benin)

2. Overview MCA Benin Compact Access to Land project Plan Foncier Rural
Evaluation
Objectives/ Hypothesis
Methodology
Household survey
Implementation
Next Steps

3. MCA Benin Compact Access to land: more secure & useful land tenure
Access to financial services: enhance credit facilities and grants given to micro, small, and medium enterprises;
Access to justice: bring courts closer to rural populations and improve court functioning
Access to markets: eliminate physical and procedural constraints to the flow of goods through the Port of Cotonou

4. Access to Land Project Policy & Legal Reform
Achieving formal property rights to land in rural & urban areas
Improving land administration & information management
Decentralizes land registration by establishing regional offices
Provides education on land policy

5. Plan Foncier Rural (Rural Landholding Plan)
Objective: Expand creation of rural land plans, land tenure certificates and local land management capacity
Process:
Information campaigns
Assess socio-economic & land tenure conditions of villages in selected communes
Prepare village profiles including documentation of location-specific land tenure terms and norms
Produce land use and tenure maps (the PFR)
Participatory method
Rural and holding plan submitted for public review and comment
Rural land use certificates issued & facilitation of formal, written records of subordinate land rights using improved approaches
Benin’s land tenure project, villages eligible to participate in the lottery displayed high poverty rates, were located in a rural area offering potential short-term economic opportunities, and showed a willingness to promote women’s land rights.

6. Evaluation objective/ hypotheses
Measure project impact on household income in PFR project areas and on investment in targeted rural parcels
Hypotheses:
Households will invest in making their property more productive (without fear of not recouping investment because of losing access to the land)
Enhanced land tenure security should facilitate land transactions from less efficient producers to more efficient producers, raising productivity
Capital constrained owners can use land as collateral to finance investments on parcel

7. Evaluation Methodology
Randomization PFR implementation at the village level
Pipeline: original plan to roll out PFR in EMICOV villages over approximately 3 years
Order of PFR implementation based on commune’s likelihood of benefitting from program
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
EMICOV villages
# treatment villages 20 60 55
# control villages

8. Link to household survey data
National household living standards measurement survey - EMICOV
EMICOV sample used as a basis for creating treatment and control groups
Qualifying villages randomly assigned to treatment or control groups
EMICOV survey provides data for assessing project impact
Implement PFR first in eligible EMICOV villages
Treatment & control villages
PFR Eligible communes
EMICOV sample
randomized representative sample that underlies the EMICoV survey.
The survey collects comprehensive data on household income, expenditure, employment, economic activity, and investment. The EMICoV sample covers approximately 10% of the ZDs (zones dénombrement, or census tracts) in the country.

9. Evaluation implementation
Rapid diagnostic in EMICOV sample villages
Diagnostic determines PFR eligible villages- does village possess characteristics that would allow the land reform activities to succeed
Half of pool of eligible villages assigned to the “treatment’ group where land reform activities will occur and half will be assigned to the “control”
Expected pool of 270 eligible EMICOV villages
135 would be randomly assigned to treatment
135 treatment villages
Eligible villages
Random selection }
270 villages
Rapid Diagnostic in EMICOV villages
135 control villages
Non eligible villages

10. Implementation Challenges
Implementation delays
Selection process included EMICOV & Non EMICOV villages
Randomization applied to EMICOV & Non EMICOV villages (separately)
First round pool of eligible EMICOV villages lower than expected
Target # treatment villages was 34- only 26 selected
Unlikely to achieve targeted pool of EMICOV villages and # of EMICOV treatment villages
At least 120 treatment villages feasible
Updated PFR
roll out plan
Y1 spring
2008
Y2 fall 2008 Y3
2009
EMICOV villages
Treatment 80 55
Control
Non EMICOVvillages 45
110
have agreed upon an implementation schedule that prioritizes the EMICoV sample villages
The rural activities of the ATL component of the Compact are planned to take place in 300 villages that will be selected from 42 communes in 9 departments according to criteria to be developed by MCA-Benin and approved by MCC.

11. But wait… you want randomization?
Separate randomization also used to select non EMICOV villages for PFR participation
Participants perceived increased transparency and fairness in this process
each lottery participant chose a plastic ball from an urn and then opened it to see if the card in the ball contained a color-coded “yes” or a “no”. The six villages that pulled a “yes” won the opportunity to participate in MCA-Benin’s rural land tenure program,

12. Next steps PFR preparatory process on going (land lexicons, etc)
Analyzing baseline characteristics of sample villages through EMICOV data
Qualitative work- short term proxies such as:
changing attitudes towards land security
intent to invest
using titles as collateral
wealth effects
The “after” comparison
factors outside of the ATL project that will affect these measures. This is particularly important for the rural ATL component, as factors such as soil quality, rainfall, and overall accessibility (including access to markets) have a significant effect on household outcomes (with or without the ATL activities). The use of spatial data on topography, road networks, soil fertility and rainfall variation, assembled in a GIS, combined with EMICoV data (which will also contain geo-located observations), will allow for the explicit and direct integration of these variables into the impact analysis