In Rwanda “Easy access to land administration is key”
In Rwanda, Kadaster is supporting the National Land Authority (NLA) as part of the LAND-at-scale programme of the Netherlands’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Together with the International Development Law Organisation (IDLO) from Italy, we aim for better integration of land administration, land use planning, and local justice. We asked two of our local counterparts at NLA about the importance of the project.
A sustainable land administration system
Esperance Mukamana, general director and chief registrar: “A sustainable Rwandan land administration system is important for different reasons: guaranteeing land rights, accessing land information and the growing land market. Citizens, investors and the government need to access land information easily and for different purposes. For example, for ensuring valid transactions, for counterchecking the authenticity of land titles, for valuation and taxation purposes, and for monitoring land use management. This linked information should be made available to both citizens and other government agencies, via system interoperability. Citizens should be able to easily access information on their mobile phone.”
Citizens, investors and the government need to access land information easily and for
different purposes.
Biggest challenge is maintenance
“Rwanda wants to build on the transparency, accuracy and low cost of its existing land administration system”, says Grace Nishimwe, head of the land administration department. “After having implemented a successful land tenure regularisation system, the bigger challenge now is to maintain it. Citizens may be willing to use the system and to update landownership information, but if registering transactions is expensive, no one will use it. So in building a sustainable land administration system, we need to consider the capacity of citizens to use it. The cost should be accessible to every landowner, and services should be nearby. Long distances to access services will increase costs and discourage citizens from registering changes.”
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