This land is NOT for sale
This is an interesting article by Frank Pichel, in which he analyzes the added value of legal certainty applied to real estate. The initial question is interesting and very true; reminds me of my recent visit to the lively area of Granada in Nicaragua, where a beautiful colonial house literally has graffiti “property in conflict, don't buy a problem”, and next to the next house with some arrows pointing to the next house saying “thieves They stole my house."
The article at the end refers to a reflective survey in which the level of security of our property can be measured.
Do you want to sell your property within a developed economy?
Place a sale sign.
Do you want to keep your property in an emerging economy?
Place a NO sale sign.
The posters indicating the non-sale of land are increasing more and more within the landscape from Nigeria to Tanzania.
It highlights the growing demand for land throughout Africa as well as the chaotic or dysfunctional systems of land governance that continue to undermine security and economic growth.
Land remains the most valuable and least secure asset in most of Africa. The World Bank estimates that the 90 percent of the land in Africa is undocumented. And most of Africa's women and men depend on this land, to which they do not have a secure right, for their housing and means of subsistence.
The lack of documentation of land rights - as well as the fraudulent documentation that often accompanies dysfunctional land systems - means that people sometimes buy land from someone who is not their real owner. Often there is no up-to-date or public record of the land provided by any official governmental entity, which leaves any interested buyer with no way of proving that they are negotiating the purchase of a property with the people who actually own it. So, people who own land sometimes face investors who have paid a good amount of money to buy their land from someone who does not own property rights. This is particularly problematic for marginalized groups, especially women, who usually lack legal documentation of their land rights and, being widowed, often find others claiming legitimate ownership of the land on which they live or they explode.
The growing recognition of the foundational role of land rights in sustainable development is causing governments to face this challenge with Liberia, Ghana and Uganda, all working towards the development of a land rights system.
Just last week, the President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, told the forum of the African Green Revolution that the continent would continue to be plagued by hunger and famine until countries gave small farmers the security and opportunity they need to invest in their lands and improve their harvests by strengthening the rights to their lands.
Now, a new interactive survey is helping to highlight this problem and the impact of unsafe land rights on conservation, security, poverty alleviation and the economic empowerment of women in Africa and beyond.
