Social Assessment Identifies Land Management Concerns in Cote d'Ivoire

Rural areas in Cote d'Ivoire
account for 55 percent of the total population. Rural people
rely heavily on export- and food-crop production as their
primary source of livelihood. However, 71 percent of the
rural population live below the poverty line. The government
and the Bank agree that access to land and natural resource
management are critical factors in coping with the rural
crisis. The government invited the Bank to help meet the
rural development challenge through a new project, the Rural
Land Management and Infrastructure Project (PNGTER). The
project was designed as one component of a nationwide
decentralization program, and it seeks to suggest new
approaches for local resource management. The social
assessment (SA) in this project identifies the key social
development concerns: access, control, and management of
land rights. This Note explains the objectives of the social
assessment, the basic steps followed, and the next steps. It
captures the findings of the provisional SA process at the
project identification stage and raises a few new issues
that need to be addressed through the SA process during the
preappraisal, appraisal, and implementation stages.