Abstract
In this article, we discuss the potential of blockchain technology in addressing the documentation of users’ land rights in the informal land rental market. Blockchain technology is a peer-to-peer protocol that can be leveraged to keep track of transactions over the internet. Publicised for its use in the bitcoin revolution, the technology provides transparency and traceability that can be used in the management of land rights. When it comes to the formalisation of land rights, blockchain technology promises to authenticate owners and other users of land, and provides a fixed ledger of land use rights transactions. At present, blockchain technology is being explored as a proof of concept in several countries to track land titles (state to individual). We extend the idea to capture the granting of land use rights (individual to individual) making use of the decentralisation, peer-to-peer nature of blockchain technology. While the technology is not a panacea to all land administration challenges, it can offer an effective means to manage land transactions, provide digital documentation to actors in the informal land rental market and reduce inefficiency in land systems. However, the uptake of the technology in land administration is limited by human related factors. These limitations include, but are not limited to, the accuracy of data being entered into the system, the ability of the system to facilitate data preservation, pre-existing institutional and legal pillars, and the digital divide across communities. Part of overcoming these barriers requires the political will of governments to invest in digital technologies and develop institutional capacities to overcome current limitations to bring land management into the industry 4.0 era.
Highlights
We explore the feasibility of blockchain technology in the documentation of land tenure to enable the empowerment of agricultural land users who participate in vernacular land markets
This article put forward arguments for the potential use of a blockchain application in managing and legitimizing land transactions through the Vernacular Land Market
The objective of this article was to highlight the strong commonalities between the Vernacular Land Markets (VLM) and blockchain and how these commonalities can be leveraged for deriving legitimization for land users such as small-scale farmers and their livelihoods
Summary
We explore the feasibility of blockchain technology in the documentation of land tenure to enable the empowerment of agricultural land users who participate in vernacular (informal) land markets. The idea of blockchain technology for land administration is being actualized within land registry projects globally to further the efficiency of land registries. The Distributed Ledger Technology used in blockchain applications can be described as a “collaboratively managed database of shared, synchronized, and replicated records that typically does not rely on central governance” The emergence of blockchain as a disruptive technology has been argued to have potential tremendous impact in land administration and management (Anand et al, 2016; Reese, 2017; Shin, 2017; Swan, 2017), which can facilitate the functioning of land markets in developing countries as well as diminish the threat of losing land rights for vulnerable communities and women. For developing countries, the idea of going from paper to digital based management is even more important in this emerging global digital economy, whereby the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) transformation of government services (via e-services) is a mechanism for reaching targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (WBG, 2016)
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