Du 06 au 08 octobre 2021, s’est tenu au NSA HOTEL de Grand-Bassam, un atelier de réflexion sur « la réingénierie des procédures d’approbation des lotissements et de délivrance de l’Arrêté de concession Définitive (ACD) axées sur la réforme du titrement massif des parcelles foncières urbaines ».

As it was widely reported in the newspapers of August 12, 2021, the government in partnership with NMB Bank, has launched a five-year Plot Loan scheme to enable land owners in informal settlements to survey and get title to their land. This was in part a result of the realisation that land owners were finding it difficult to foot the cost of surveying, registering and obtaining title deeds. Hand in hand with the loan, the cost of surveying has been reduced from Sh150,000 to Sh130,000. The project is being piloted in Mbarali District before rolling out to other areas,

USAID and Colombia’s Superintendence of Notary and Registry (SNR) continue recovering important land records by digitizing files and building the entity’s capacity to serve a healthy land market.

In 2016, when USAID tried to support the Colombian government with the digitization of rural land and property files, this initiative encountered resistance.

Land is the most important asset in most parts of the world that people can own, including Uganda. In Buganda, land is the way of life as the kingdom’s cultural aspirations are based on land, hence titles like Ssaabataka for a prince who is going to become the Kabaka. Clan heads and elders in Buganda are known as Abataka. However, this scenario isn’t only prevalent in Buganda. Land is a major asset across the country. It is the biggest means of production since our economy is agricultural-based. 

Whenever the word ‘lease’ is mentioned, three things must come to mind; periodic holding, terms and conditions, and reversionary interests. These features are indispensable to this tenure system because by definition, it is the form of land holding that affords exclusive ownership to be granted by an owner of land, whom we call “the lessor” or “landlord” to another person, called “the lessee” or “tenant” for a period of time, after which such land “reverts” to the lessor. Leases accommodate no perpetuity, however long the period in the lease may be.

Treasury CS Ukur Yatani has boosted President Uhuru Kenyatta’s election pledge to issue titled deeds with a Sh1.5 billion allocating for processing and registration of the documents.

Further, Mr Yatani set aside Sh600 million for digitisation of land registries, a move expected to speed up the processing and issuance of title deeds and a further Sh105 million for the construction of land registries.

A number of heavily entrenched cultural practices and policy orientation continue to frustrate efforts and gender equity in our country.

At the economic level, requirements for example for loans are pegged on collaterals such as land title deeds, yet traditionally women rarely inherited land thus fund almost impossible to get loans from financial institutions.

He had heard from around the town that there was an elderly but vibrant woman selling a piece of her land in Nkozi, close to Uganda Martyrs University.

At the time, Nkozi did not have the status and population it does now. In 2003, a young Vincent Agaba acquired the land.

“A quarter of an acre at Shs3m,” he says.  Agaba was neither employed nor earning from any other source. It was from his pocket money that he saved money to acquire the sizeable land.

Makerere University has digitised more than 10,000 land records to preserve fragile documents and ease resolution of land conflicts in the country.
The hard copies of land records from 1830 to 1995 were digitised by four researchers, Ms Rhoda Nalubega, Ms Racheal Nabbosa, Ms Monica Naluwooza, and Ms Sara Maka, who are staff of Makerere University Library.