Lands Commission require $165M for nation’s digital mapping – Details

The Lands Commission will require $165 million to comprehensively develop a digital map of the country for effective land administration.

The establishment of a digital map would ensure the development of an integrated land information system and database to facilitate the speedy delivery of secure and credible land titles.

The Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, said digitally mapping the country is crucial because it would take away the situation where various agencies developed maps to their specifications.

Mr Buah stated this during his maiden visit to the Lands Commission last Tuesday to interact with the staff and understand the operations of the Commission.

He was accompanied by the Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Alhaji Yusif Sulemana; the Advisor on Mines to the minister, Prof. Jerry Samuel Yaw Kuma; and other senior staff of the ministry.

Commitment

Mr Buah, who is also the Member of Parliament (MP) for Ellembelle, said although the amount involved in mapping the country was quite huge, the ministry was prepared to work with the Lands Commission to explore sources of funding to undertake the project.

“This project is key to transforming land administration in this country, so we need to do whatever we can to get the money,” he stressed.

The minister said given that the Commission retains 30 per cent of internally generated funds (IGF), it was important to increase service delivery to attract more funds.

Reset agenda

Mr Buah said in line with the overall agenda of the government to reset the country, there was a need for the Lands Commission to accelerate the process of inculcating technology to facilitate service delivery.

“Ghanaians gave this government the biggest mandate to reset this country, and we need to use the mandate wisely to their benefit.

“We need to reset the Lands Commission even as we look at the bigger picture of resetting the country. Doing this requires a collective effort, and we must all work together to achieve it,” he added.

Mr Buah stressed the need for the Commission to digitise all its documentation and processes to enhance the delivery of land titles and other services.

He said it was unacceptable that in the 21st century where innovation and technology were driving change, about 90 per cent of the Lands Commission’s work and systems were done manually.

He also underscored the need for the staff of the Commission to adopt positive values such as hard work, integrity and dedication to duty to help transform the Commission into an institution where people would be willing to go and access services.

Positive image

The minister reminded the employees of the Commission that the people of Ghana had a negative image of them as workers of one of the most corrupt institutions, so they needed to change things around to discard that negative tag.

Mr Buah assured the staff of the Commission that everything possible would be done to improve their remuneration.

The Executive Secretary of the Commission, Benjamin Arthur, said the Commission would work with the minister to implement policy initiatives that would help to transform the land sector.

Background

The Ghana Institution of Surveyors has consistently called on the government to support the Lands Commission to develop a comprehensive digital map for Ghana.

For instance, at an event held to launch the 18th Surveyors’ Week celebration and the 54th annual general meeting of the institution in Accra on February 20, 2023, the Vice President of the institution, Sulemana Dauda Mahama, said the lack of digital map data was affecting geoinformation delivery and also compelling some public agencies to acquire and process their data.

On September 19, 2023, the Lands Commission told journalists that it was entering into a partnership with a local investor, PBD Ltd, to roll out an $85-million project aimed at transforming land administration in the country.

Mr Arthur, who was then the acting Executive Secretary of the Commission, had explained that the private company would provide funding and technical support for the rollout of the project in 2024.

He had also said as part of the project, the investor would help to develop digital maps of the country, build the human resource capacity of the Lands Commission through training and retraining, retool the Commission and help to consolidate the digitisation of land records.

Mr Arthur had also explained that the plan was to ensure that the investor put in the needed resources to implement the intervention so that the Lands Commission would repay the investment over a while from internally generated funds.