Ghanaian Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia says the government is re-examining its management and use of land to add value and reap more benefits from the resource.

Addressing the 2018 Land Administration Forum held in Accra on Wednesday, Bawumia said the government will digitise land title registration and management systems to enable the country to leverage land to achieve development objectives and remove bureaucratic bottlenecks.

“There is huge capital value in land. Let us create a transparent and progressive market for land. Let us securitise it to create wealth. We call for the efforts of all stakeholders to make this happen,” he said.

He added that the current system was “chaotic” and needed to be urgently reformed. Among complaints with the current system, landowners have said that properties can be seized in breach of normal procedure, while prospective land buyers have allegedly been defrauded by officials who demand bribes.

The objective is to ensure that the country has a functional land ownership registration system by the end of 2018.

Due to the lack of digital records, Ghana is grappling with legal cases arising from multiple land sales, insecurity of tenure, protracted ownership disputes and what he describes as the “land-guards syndrome.”, Bawumia said.

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