Transforming Ethiopia’s Cities: Land Reforms for a Climate-Resilient Urban Future

The World Bank’s 2025 report, developed in partnership with the Ministry of Urban and Infrastructure (MUI), Land Equity International (LEI), and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), highlights one of Africa’s most pressing development challenges. Ethiopia’s cities are growing fast, and its urban population is projected to double from 28 million to nearly 59 million by 2040. Yet this transformation is unfolding against a backdrop of escalating climate risks, sprawling informality, and weak governance. Nearly 60% of urban spaces are informal settlements, built on unstable slopes, flood-prone areas, or environmentally fragile zones. Addis Ababa alone contributes about 20% of the country’s GDP but houses just 4% of its population. Rapid urbanization, especially in secondary cities like Adama, Hawassa, and Jigjiga, is putting enormous pressure on outdated infrastructure and limited public services. And while cities currently account for 15% of Ethiopia’s greenhouse gas emissions, this is projected to rise dramatically to 35% by 2030, due to transport emissions, energy use, and poor urban planning that erodes biodiversity and intensifies environmental degradation.

Laws Without Teeth, Cities Without Plans

While Ethiopia has enacted a series of federal proclamations aimed at formalizing land rights, such as the 2011 Urban Land Lease Holding Proclamation and the 2014 Urban Landholding Registration Proclamation, their implementation is hindered by rigid, exclusionary standards. These laws require compliance with strict building codes, adherence to Local Development Plans (LDPs), and physical regularization, all of which are beyond the reach of most informal settlers. Cities lacking adequate LDPs cannot provide legal recognition or basic services to large portions of their population. The legal framework also lacks climate integration, with most environmental assessments failing to incorporate flood risk or climate resilience planning. In practice, urban land governance remains inaccessible, expensive, and opaque. Paper-based land records are fragmented across institutions, making registration slow and cumbersome. The system is especially punitive toward residents of informal settlements, who risk eviction without compensation under existing laws. Instead of integrating these areas into the urban fabric, city authorities often use eviction as a tool of urban renewal, pushing the poor to the periphery while auctioning inner-city land to private developers.

A System Divided: Rural-Urban Disconnect and Institutional Gridlock

At the heart of Ethiopia’s urban land problem is a deeply fragmented institutional architecture. Land rights are created by one authority and registered by another, with minimal coordination or shared data systems. This separation results in inefficiencies, delays, and confusion, especially in peri-urban areas where rural land transitions to urban use. With rural and urban lands governed by different ministries and legal systems, there is no mechanism for smoothly converting rural land rights to urban leases. Farmers on the edge of expanding cities, wary of expropriation without compensation, often sell their land informally. Buyers, in turn, construct makeshift homes that fall outside any legal protection. Cities, unable to pay compensation or manage formal planning processes, find themselves overwhelmed by unregulated sprawl. Efforts to register urban land have been sluggish, just 27% of urban parcels were covered by the legal cadaster as of 2025. With limited municipal finances and unreliable land records, urban governments struggle to fund or enforce any kind of coherent land use strategy.

Seeds of Reform: Digital Tools, New Laws, and Participatory Planning

Despite the challenges, Ethiopia is laying the groundwork for a more integrated and climate-sensitive approach to urban land governance. Two new Proclamations, drafted in 2024 and awaiting parliamentary approval, aim to simplify and modernize the process of land regularization. These include the introduction of “tolerance limits” for minor discrepancies in land records, the merging of adjudication and registration processes, and streamlined mechanisms for transitioning rural land into urban tenure. A new Land Information Management System (LIMS), supported by a $30 million partnership with the Korean government, is being piloted in cities like Adama and Hawassa. LIMS includes the installation of Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) to enhance cadastral mapping precision. At the same time, the government is embracing a suite of innovative planning and analytical tools. City Scans and Nature-Based Solutions Scans, developed by GFDRR, help cities identify heat islands, flood zones, and green space deficits. Machine learning models are being used to map informal settlements and assess flood vulnerability. A user-friendly GHG Estimator now allows secondary cities to calculate their emissions even with minimal data. These tools are being integrated into broader planning efforts, including Climate Action Plans and Climate Smart Capital Investment Plans (CS-CIPs), which guide cities in aligning their infrastructure investments with climate mitigation and adaptation goals.

The Road Ahead: From Paper Plans to Climate-Resilient Cities

Looking to the future, the report emphasizes four key areas of action: building institutional capacity, strengthening national spatial data infrastructure, accelerating regularization and registration, and integrating climate priorities into land policy. The Ministry of Urban and Infrastructure has already trained over 5,000 land professionals, but further technical training, especially in participatory and fit-for-purpose methods, is crucial. Harmonizing rural and urban land systems, particularly through shared digital platforms, will enable smoother transitions in peri-urban areas and ensure that farmers and low-income residents are not left behind. By loosening rigid planning standards and embracing citizen-driven mapping processes, Ethiopia can bring millions of informal residents into the legal fold, unlocking access to climate-resilient housing, basic services, and secure tenure. Perhaps most importantly, the report calls for greater coordination between land and climate institutions. Without this synergy, land interventions will continue to fall short of their climate potential. Ethiopia’s experience offers vital lessons for rapidly urbanizing countries across Africa and Asia. It demonstrates that climate goals and inclusive urban development are not mutually exclusive, but can be mutually reinforcing if backed by data, political will, and integrated governance.