International Expert on Completion reporting for the Sida support to the Institute of Land Administration
The Institute of Land Administration (ILA) is part of Bahir Dar University located in Bahir Dar – the capital of the Amhara National Regional State In October 2012 ILA moved to the new Yibab Campus located some 5 km southwest of Bahir Dar Centre along the Addis / Debre Markos road. The Institute is the first of its kind in East Africa. Together with the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, ORGUT supports this Institute of Land Administration which was established in 2008. Building capacity in land administration is part of Ethiopia’s overall strategy for sustaining poverty reduction and food security gains. The programme meets immediate needs for competent national land administration professionals, but also strategically increases the institutional capacity required for a robust and self-sustaining land administration sector in the country. The Institute is well equipped with modern surveying instruments as well as computer labs with necessary software for processing the data from the instruments and for GIS applications.
The B.Sc. education programme in Land Administration started at Bahir Dar University (BDU) in September 2006 under the then Faculty of Law. The programme was initiated by the Environmental Protection, Land Administration and Use Authority (EPLAUA) because of a serious lack of trained manpower in the area of land administration. Land Administration is a new undertaking in Ethiopia and in order to get international experience, collaboration with the KTH started in 2004 when staffs from BDU were sent to KTH for Master (MSc) studies in Land Administration.
There is a growing demand for professionals in Land Administration, both in the urban and rural sector. The Board of Study, which is an advisory body to the Institute, has members from potential employers of the graduates in order to ensure that the education continues to be demand-driven. Currently, the ILA offers a 4 year B.Sc. education programme in Land Administration for regular students. The programme is divided into five tracks namely: Basic track, Geomatics track, Economics track, Law track and Land Management track. The B.Sc. education has a holistic approach including several different disciplines which give the students a wide knowledge of the technical, economical, legal and management aspects of land administration. The objective is to produce adequately trained land administration professionals who can serve their community as generalists rather than specialists, with various skills such as cadastral surveying, digital mapping, GIS, land law, land registration, property valuation and dispute resolution. MSc programme in Land Administration started in 2011 and also a 5 1/2 years B.Sc. education programme in Architecture. B.Sc. education programme in Surveying and Geoinformatics will start in 2013 and will later be followed by a MSc programme. In addition BSc programmes for Urban and Regional Planning as well as Real Estate Management are being prepared.
The main objective of this assignment was to support the project management to produce a Final Report from KTH-ORGUT to BDU and Sida.