The passing of the Land Expropriation Without Compensation bill by the South African parliament with overwhelming support by the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and the radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) has instigated uncertainties in the country's property rights and agricultural production.
“This plot is not for sale” are the six words you will find, marked on a lot of properties and plots of land in Uganda. The words are meant to ward off quack land or property brokers and conmen. Most of the cases handled in courts in Uganda, and Kampala in particular, are fraud-related cases (like selling land while the true owners are away using counterfeit titles) and land transaction fraud (when fake land titles are obtained and sadly some officers in the land registry are involved).
Knowing the "where" is important for so many companies and projects today. A business might want to know what path you take to work to send you targeted ads about coffee shops you pass. Augmented reality platforms might map out interior spaces of your home and offices to create a dancing critter in your living room. Self driving cars need to map their environment, and satellites map out the Earth below.
UNLIKELY PARTNERS: BLOCKCHAIN & LAND SURVEYING INDUSTRY
OUTLINE
I. Introduction to Blockchain Technology
II. Overview of the Surveying Industry
III. Surveying and Blockchain
IV. Types of Blockchains
V. The Case for Blockchain in the Real Estate Industry
VI. Blockchain, Surveying, Land Registry and Cadastre
VII. Blockchain Registry Integration Levels
VIII. The Future of Blockchain for Real Estate
IX. Conclusion
APPENDIX
Glossary — Blockchain Terminology
We meet Rosalía in a roadside café in a dusty town in the Quiché department, in Guatemala’s Western Highlands. She lowers her voice whenever people come in – you never know who might be listening. Land is sensitive stuff, especially in Quiché, a region that still bears, perhaps more than any other part of Guatemala, the scars of the civil war (1960-1996) – as we will see. In 2018 alone, 15 defenders of land rights in Guatemala have been killed with total impunity, several of them in Quiché.
Author: Ahmadou Aly Mbaye
Editor's Note:
Ahead of next week’s World Bank conference on land and poverty, Lorenzo Cotula and Brendan Schwartz discuss how development finance institutions can better address land rights issues.
Conservation, said Aldo Leopold, is harmony between (wo)men and land. Land should justifiably figure not only into the conservation, but also in development debates, policy and discourses. Missing land rights and land tenure security can be costly for states, communities as well as local and global development.
Agriculture represents a key sector in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially when it comes to lifting close to a billion people out of rural poverty. We can’t ignore that many millions of poor households continue to depend primarily on farming.
