Erastus A. Nambala
Our country needs to build a modern land administration system which will secure individual property ownership, with a well-managed communal tenure system which governs natural resources and land.
This will make provision for fundamental building blocks for future development in resource governance. Apart from that, the system needs support from other external agencies and the community in various areas.
For Namibia to ensure sustainable development and a decrease in poverty, secure tenure will not reduce that on its own. Therefore, the process of local land administration must be improved, and an appropriate land information system be developed. In addition to that, for us to have joined government and a modern land market, we need to re-engineer our cadastral and registration system.
Land administration systems themselves must provide a modern framework in which sustainable development demands can be met. And with current land administration systems that are in operation, we can’t manage to meet these sustainable development demands because many of our systems originate from past colonial rule or earlier. Thus, there is a need for new legislation which permits electronic conveyancing and facilitates the sharing of data between the private and public sectors.
Based on the current land administration system which is running, do you think we have an efficient and stable property/land market? Is there any limitation on high-income buyers from benefiting in local authorities’ auctions? Is there available serviced land for housing programmes such as the NHE and BTP (Build Together Programme), where low-income people will benefit? How about the availability of credit and capital; is it available to all? The answer to the posed questions is NO, though we are 30-something years into independence.
Therefore, for us to achieve an efficient and stable land market that encourages sustainable development, which includes the availability of credit and capital, there is a need for transparency in land, and an inexpensive and simple way of transferring property. Overall, there must be a clear definition and sound administration of property rights. We need to re-engineer our system and build a Land Administration System (LAS) based on modern technology economies. So, the system can involve an advanced conceptual framework which is supported by an Information and Communication Technology model.
Lastly, re-engineering and building a modern Land Administration System concerns more the updating and integrating agencies for successful land administration systems, and putting land information to work for economic decision-making, emergency management and environmental protection.