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Land Sector Corruption in Ethiopia 315
Although some of the areas have meaningful service standards, these
standards are seldom published, and little is understood by the service
providers or the public. In most areas, either urban or rural, no service
standards exist.
Key monitoring and evaluation issues that create opportunities for corruption
include the following:
• Access to information in urban areas is difficult because of the lack of
standards in records management and difficulties in locating information
in different institutions, which creates opportunities for corruption
such as the issuance of forged documents or the illegal alteration of
records.
• Access to the registers at woreda level in rural areas is difficult, which
reduces public access to the records and creates opportunities for corruption
and the illegal alteration of records.
Recommendations
A number of factors can foster corruption or the abuse by decision makers
in the land sector’s value chain of activities:
• Lack of clarity in land policy
• Lack of public participation in policy formulation and legislative processes
• Failure of land policy and legislation to reflect how significant sections
of the population recognize and deal with land issues
• Lack of public awareness of land policy, legislation, and procedures,
compounded by
° complicated procedures and forms;
° unreasonable or conflicting restrictions or prerequisites for applications;
and
° complicated or nontransparent schedules of fees and charges.
Restricted access to land records can also reduce the ability of policy
makers and the general population to exercise oversight over land management
and administration systems, not to mention the officials responsible
for these systems. There is no common solution to corruption in the
land sector. To put forward a range of steps that could be undertaken in
a country, one needs to understand the scope and extent of the problems
and the underlying factors that foster corrupt practices.