Abstract
Land information is one of the basic requirements for land management activities such as land consolidation. However, the dearth of land information on customary lands limits the development and application of land consolidation. This paper presents and discusses the results of an experiment carried out to test the potential of participatory land administration applied on customary lands in support of land consolidation. A brief overview of the evolution of crowdsourced, voluntary, and participatory approaches is provided alongside newly related insights into neogeography and neo-cadastre, and fit-for-purpose and pro-poor land administration. The concept of participatory land administration is then developed in this context. The area of the experiment is in Northern Ghana where the process was developed together with the local farming community. The study involved collecting land information relating to farms over a two-week period, using a mobile app and a satellite image, based on participatory land administration. The results show that Participatory Land Administration can potentially support land consolidation, though further investigation is needed on how it can be integrated into the formal land registration system, into an actual land consolidation project.
Highlights
Land consolidation is described as a land management activity that involves all the procedures for exchanging, rearranging, realigning, and expanding farm parcels in rural areas with the goal of increasing food productivity
This paper presents an experiment into a proposed approach to land administration on customary lands to support responsible land consolidation
The nature of land administration as a public administration activity, dealing with the management of sensitive information, citizen contribution requires some form of regulation and guidance at varying levels as found in Participatory Geographic Information Science (PGIS), but not to the standard of traditional land administration. This is what this paper describes as Participatory Land Administration (PLA)
Summary
Land consolidation is described as a land management activity that involves all the procedures for exchanging, rearranging, realigning, and expanding farm parcels in rural areas with the goal of increasing food productivity. Responsible land consolidation uses approaches that continuously align the technical and administrative requirements, and the internal processes of land consolidation to the dynamic local societal demands, economic conditions, cultural and legal requirements [1]. The collection, maintenance, and dissemination of land information is described here as land administration [4]. This paper focuses on the collection of land information to support land consolidation. The dearth of land information on Sub-Saharan Africa’s rural customary lands has been shown to be one of the militating factors to undertaking land consolidation in the area [5]. This paper presents an experiment into a proposed approach to land administration on customary lands to support responsible land consolidation
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