HTSPE Shortlisted for British Expertise Award

February 27, 2014

An HTSPE-led project is one of three shortlisted by the London-based trade organization British Expertise for Outstanding International Development Project 2014.

HTSPE is a member of the DAI group.

Funded by the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID), the project—Rwanda Land Tenure Regularisation (LTR)—worked to alleviate poverty and build up social stability through increasing land rights. In its first phase, the project developed, tested, and designed a feasible approach to land administration in Rwanda; the second phase entailed rollout of the LTR process and development of the national Land Administration System. The project ran from 2005 to 2013.

HTSPE used a participatory approach to capture data, together with cost-effective operating systems that drove down the cost per title to around $7 in Rwanda, compared to an historic benchmark for similar land tenure programs of $10 in Kyrgyzstan or—the lowest achieved in other parts of Africa—$69 in Lesotho.

More than 110,000 people were employed over the life of the project, 99 percent of them hired from local communities. More than 10 million parcels of land were demarcated, with 8.4 million leases issued.

The leases were issued mainly to smallholder farmers, who for the first time, said project staff, are able to obtain loans and invest against the value of their primary asset—land. There is also less gender bias in the recording of inheritance rights. More single women are now registered as landowners than single males and 92 percent of land certificates now include the name of a woman.

“The judging panel reviewed even more entries than last year, which was a record year itself,” said Tracey Smith, Chief Executive at British Expertise. “The categories were fiercely contested and the overall standard of submissions was assessed to be of an outstanding quality. This will be a further superb showcase for the achievements of the UK professional services sector internationally.”

The award ceremony is scheduled for April 10.