APPEAR Project EduLAND2 [2016-2020]

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The project “Implementation of Academic Land Administration Education in Ethiopia for Supporting Sustainable Development (EduLAND2) was launched in March 2016 and has a duration of four years. It is a bilateral project between Austrian and Ethiopian universities, funded by the Austrian Development Agency in the framework of the APPEAR programme (Appear 2018). BOKU is project coordinator and Debre Markos University, Bahir Dar University (both Ethiopia), and Technische Universität Wien (Austria) are project partners.

The project aims to establish an Institute of Land Administration (ILA) at Debre Markos University (DMU) in Ethiopia to alleviate the shortage of trained academic workforce and to conduct problem-solving research in the field of land administration. The project will strengthen the capacities of all the partner institutions in education, research, and management. It provides a significant contribution for sustainable development in Ethiopia in general and the Amhara National Regional State in particular, by joint problem-oriented research, by building academic staff capability, by designing a research-driven bachelor curriculum, by joint research activities and by preparing demand driven community services – all on the topic of land administration. The project intends to contribute to improve living conditions of the local population, to guarantee land tenure security, and to provide an objective basis for decision-making in order to support good governance.

Until end of the project (February 2020) the following results could be achieved:

In April 2016, a Land Administration Institute at the Debre Markos University was established.
Until August 2016, the project partners developed a curriculum on “Surveying and Land Administration”, which was launched in October 2016 at Debre Markos University. Since that time the study program is running (four years) with a total of 180 students (approximately 30% of them are female)
A computer lab with 25 computers was established at Debre Markos University and within the project, basic surveying equipment and study material were financed.
Purchase of surveying instruments (five total stations, four GNSS stations, five GNSS handheld instruments, three 3D-Monitors)
4 teachers from BOKU and 3 teachers from Technical University Vienna provided lectures for students of Debre Markos University .
Lecturers from BOKU (3), TU Vienna (2) and Prof. Mattsson (professor emiritus from KTH Stockholm) delivered short-term training for staff of Ethiopian partner universities and Ethiopian land administration experts.
Two feasibility studies on semi-automatic parcel boundary delimitation and land cover classification were conducted by the Austrian partners in cooperation with the Ethiopian colleagues.
In total four presentations project were given at three conferences (EALD Conference in Paris - 2017, DLT in Vienna - 2019, and World Bank Conference in Washington in 2019.
The first 30 students graduated in "Land Administration and Surveying" on January 23, 2021.
15 (11 SCI) articles were published.
Ayelech Kidie MENGESHA achieved her Master Degree on "Mountain Forestry" in February 2019. With her master thesis she was appointed (and in the short list) for the BOKU Sustainability Award 2019 and she was awarded with the Inge Dirmhirn Award in 2020.
Abebaw Andarge GEDEFAW successfully defended his PhD at BOKU on February 15, 2021.
Ayelech Kidie MENGESHA successfully defended her PhD at BOKU on October 13, 2022.