Morocco Land Productivity Project Evaluation: Baseline Report
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Morocco Land Productivity Project Evaluation: Baseline Report

Published: Dec 27, 2023
Publisher: Millennium Challenge Corporation
Global Food and Agriculture International Aid Agencies Research and Evaluation
Key Findings
  • We find that the Rural Land Activity was designed to address the needs of the population at baseline, including an unmet demand for rural land; limited access to credit (and an aversion to risk); low levels of land tenure security for women, heirs, and other vulnerable groups; a low level of agricultural investments; and low agricultural productivity due to a lack of water and irrigation, vulnerability to weather, and drought.
  • We also confirm that there is scope for private sector led development of industrial zones in Morocco to lead to greater investment, through improved industrial zone management and infrastructure provision. 
This report presents the baseline analysis for an independent evaluation of the $169.5 million Land Productivity Project created by the Government of Morocco and sponsored by the Millennium Challenge Corporation. The report centers around two project activities:  the Rural Land Activity ($30.3 million) was designed to develop a faster and more inclusive process for delivering individual (or co-owned) land titles to smallholder farmers  who currently farm on irrigated collective land (through a process called melkisation); and the Industrial Land Activity ($131.4 million) was designed to pilot a new market-driven public-private partnership (PPP) approach to industrial zone development and rehabilitation. This baseline evaluation seeks to establish baseline (reference) values for key activity outcomes and validate whether the program has been designed to address the needs of the population at baseline. For the impact evaluation of the Rural Land Activity, we also demonstrate balance between our treatment and control groups through a propensity score matching process (project impacts will be estimated in the endline report).

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