Securing land titles with blockchain in Ghana

Alan Tettey, Accra
June 4, 2024

Land is a reliable and tangible asset for Ghanaians. Financial institutions see it as an acceptable collateral for personal and business loan. A land title protects succession rights for spouses, especially women and their descendants. But individuals and companies face hurdles and lengthy delays in the administrative process leading to the acquisition of land titles. According to the World Bank, traditions continue to have a strong bearing on land tenure, making legal ownership rights over land uncertain. This is because of the complexity of the land tenure, where legal and traditional rules cohabit.

Over the past three decades, the government of Ghana has implemented reforms to modernize the land acquisition and legalization process. These reforms have been slow and have not yet yielded their desired outcomes. Authorities are now turning to digitization to speed up the reforms.

Persistent challenges

Informal land sales continue to dominate real estate transactions in Ghana. As a result, 78 percent of land ownership remains un-registered according to estimates from the UN Habitat. The land question in Ghana is a concern at the highest level of the State. On June 23rd, 2021, Vice President of Ghana, Mahamudu Bawumia acknowledged that the results of years of efforts are mixed. ‟Governments after governments, bank loans after bank loans, our fundamental problems in land administration persist, seemingly unsolvable, and citizens’ complaints get louder and louder”, he decried. He was speaking at a symposium organized by the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources.

On September 2nd, 2021, the President of Ghana echoed the view of his deputy during the inauguration of new members of the NLC. In the same tone, the President of Ghana lamented about the lack of progress despite the various interventions by successive governments. ‟Most of the challenges in our land administration still persist, including dishonest sale of lands, poor record-keeping at the Commission, encroachment on public lands, and the fraudulent registration of lands”, he said.

A lack of coordination between land administration agencies and a shortage of skilled surveyors and lawyers partly explain the limited impact of previous reforms. According to the World Bank, legal loopholes continue to create conflicts in a context where informal arrangements coexist with laws.

Informality

A reform project funded by the World Bank in 2003¹ reduced the duration of the land title registration steps from 135 to just 34 days. However, in practice, it takes many months to complete the process. To further modernize the process, Ghana reorganized its land administration in 2008, and created a new institution, known as the National Lands Commission (NLC). The NLC harmonized the procedures, cut duplication and institutional confusions. In its corporate website, the NLC declares that its mission is to provide quality, reliable, and efficient services. The institution also promises guaranteed tenure, property valuation, surveying and mapping through modern technology.

Despite the reforms, the governance of the land sector remains firmly under the dual customary and statutory systems, which often results in conflicting and confusing overlaps between the two systems. According to the Centre for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa (CAHF)², 80 percent of land in the country is under customary arrangements, while the State owns 20 percent. Private individuals or institutions can acquire land rights through outright purchase from customary landowners. However, in the absense of a comprehensive registered data base of stool lineage and rights, litigations remain a constant risk in these land transactions.

Public Digitization drive

The government of Ghana banks on technology to reform land ownership through digitization. The first milestone in the drive toward the digitization of land registration processes was the introduction of the notion of ‟Electronic Conveyancing” in the 2020 Land Act (ACT 1036). Under this new law, an electronic conveyance makes provision for the time and date when conveyance takes effect. It introduces the electronic signature of each person. The government says this signature will authenticate and provide an indelible proof of identification for the parties to a land transaction.

The Land Act complements another important electronic regulation; the Borrowers and Lenders Act, 2008 (Act 773) which established the ‟Collateral Registry”. This Collateral Registry requires banks, financial institutions, professional services such as lawyers and land surveyors and also the public to use electronic filing in land transactions.

To avoid duplications, the 2020 Land Act (ACT 1036) repeal 13 land related Acts, orders, and rules. A ‟Liaison Unit”, in the Office of the Vice President, coordinates the effective implmentatio of the changes across all government agencies. This unit also works with the Lands Commission and the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources to accelerate the digitization processes.

Private Tech initiatives

The private sector has been slow to join the government efforts. The Deutsche Gesellshaft Fur Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), which funded land reform in Ghana, says that land digitization has had ‟limited success in Ghana so far”. A member of the Ghana Blockchain Association told the New Economy Ghana that only a strict enforcement of law will force landowners to comply with digitization. He said that without an educational engagement and sensitization campaign by the government, landowners and chiefs may see the transparency of blockchain as an invasion of privacy in their personal properties. However, four companies have implemented small-scale systems with mixed results.

BenBen

• BenBen became operational in 2014 with ambitions to leverage blockchain technology to build digital solutions for land rights governance. At inception, BenBen announced the development and implementation of solutions, which digitalize data in land-related transactions. BenBen then developed the Keva application. The company described the Kiva system as ‟a blockchain land rights measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) platform for de-risking investments in Africa’s agri-carbon project sector”. Keva lets farmers and landowners make collective decisions via participatory land governance voting and smart contracts. Embedded ‟Pay-To-Regularize” NFTs (Non Fungible Tokens) acted as a social impact mechanism for investors. This feature offered the opportunity to adopt a climate-positive agriculture and to subsidize the costs of land mapping, document preparation, and land registration.

Bitland

• In 2017, a Ghanaian FinTech start-up company, Bitland teamed up with the Ghana Land Commission to build a blockchain-based land registry. In a pilot phase, the company registered more than 5,000 properties in the city of Accra. Landowners obtained a unique ID that was linked to their property as well as a digital certificate validating their possession in case of a dispute. Bitland hoped to create the first transparent and non-falsifiable land title records in Ghana. The company also conducted pilot schemes in 28 communities in Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city. Bitland used OpenLedger, built on top of the BitShares platform and MIT-licensed Graphene blockchain technology.

Seso Global

• In June 2020, Seso Global launched an online portal in Ghana. The UK based company described itself as a marketplace with a unique ‟one-stop-shop” for digital real estate transactions. The company offered buyers access to trusted properties and professional service through a unique ecosystem of services. According to the company, the system was based on ‟a secured end-to-end property purchasing experience along the entire real-estate value chain”. The company said that its blockchain technology allowed home buyers from anywhere in the world to buy properties. This technology, it said, lets buyers to view properties, receive mortgages or financing and engage lawyers to secure an end-to-end transaction across one system.

Land Layby Group

• Land Layby Group is a Nairobi-based real estate company that offers an online blockchain network that allows individuals to purchase property in Ghana. The application offers potential buyers a transparent mechanism to review the accurate ownership records of the Government Land Registry systems on a tamper proof digital form. Land Layby Group believes that by using blockchain to publish the land records online, the system eliminates the risk of multiple titles for the same piece of land. The technology conducted a pilot project on that digitalized land ownership system. But during the implementation, they reported fierce resistance and reluctance from traditional chiefs, private landowners and even local government authorities. They left behind a status quo that persists today.

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