Assessment of Addis Ababa’s Urban Land Lease Implementation: A Backing to Make Informed Decision

Allocation and distribution of urban land have an impact in promoting or deterring overall urban development, directing the general political, economic environments to developmental or rent seeking environments, especially for countries in low economic development, where the capital market is not developed enough to create wealth for the mass. It hinders or facilities urban dwellers to access the scarce resource that has a potential for sustained growth and development. This paper is, therefore, intended to assess the performance of lease policy in supplying serviced land for development purposes with especial emphasis to Addis Ababa city and help to make an informed decision on the lease implementation. To meet these objectives, both quantitative and qualitative research approach was applied and primary and secondary data had been collected and analysed descriptively. The findings indicate that urban land supply was not demand responded. Numbers of plots per auction have not been exceeding 145 plots on average; auction price is more than 10 times that of government supported housing program. The trend is not promising in terms of land allocation and price. Therefore, the city administration needs to analyse the problem thoroughly and take policy intervention which helps to enhance land supply stemmed from the present performance. Keywords: auction price; benchmark price; lease policy; land transfer modalities; land marke