Экзамен зачет учебный год 2023 / Dickerman, Land Registration in Africa

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The paper below concurs in the description given of the "Huza System" by Benneh:

GH12 Dumor, E.E.K. "The Huza as an Indigenous Co-operative

Institution and Agricultural Extension Work in Somanya District." Paper presented at the Ghana Sociological Association Conference, Kumasi, 1975.

Dumor argues that despite the individual ownership of parcels, sufficient cooperation remains that could be advantageously used for promoting agricultural development. According to the author, benefits of this system of tenure include its potential for "block" farm development, the continued possibility of using different ecological niches to produce various crops, and the fact that the average holding size is 10 acres (a size found on only 18 percent of Ghanaian farms). No analysis of impacts to date is provided.

The most detailed view of the settlement pattern in a registered area is provided in:

GH13 Hunter, John M. "Cocoa Migration and Patterns of Land

Ownership in the Densu Valley near Suhum, Ghana." In People and Land in Africa South of the Sahara, edited by R. Prothero Mansell, pp. 85-109. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.

Hunter traces the history of migration associated with the opening of new cocoa-growing areas, drawing on data collected from a registration program carried out by the Department of Agriculture and from his own survey and in- terviewing conducted in the area in 1960. (The purpose of the registration program was to facilitate the payment of grants to farmers to replace diseased cocoa trees.) In the Suhum area, 39 miles north-northwest of Accra, 179 blocks of land were surveyed, comprising 5,605 separately registered farms on 16,297 acres. A detailed breakdown of registered parcels and their locations is presented on p. 92, while land use patterns (food production only, food and cocoa, etc.) are shown on p. 95.

The registration project has provided Hunter with accurate information about land acquisition and parcel shapes, but is not the actual focus of his research. Hunter thus describes the process of land acquisition by immigrant farmers, who now own 78% of the land in the area, in the fifty or so years before registration and the ways in which the land is divided among the new owners. Stranger farmers frequently form themselves into companies for the purposes of purchasing land in an area, and then divide the land between them-selves according to how many shares each member has subscribed to. The result is a very interesting pattern of farm shapes which contrasts with those of the indigenous people of the area. Whereas the purchased land tends to be farmed in long, thin strips, the indigenous lands almost always present a patchy mosaic pattern.

Customary procedure for alienating and demarcating land is also described in:

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GH14 Nukunya, G.R. "Land Tenure and Inheritance in Anloga." Technical Publication Series, no. 30. Legon: Institute of Statistical, Social, and Economic Research, 1972.

Currently, licensed letters are sent to the Commissioner of Oaths to lend legal credence to these customary practices. Nukunya states that sales of land and of commercially valuable trees on that land are often done in separate agreements.

A similar description of land.transactions at an earlier date is given in:

GH15 Pogucki, R.J.H. Land Tenure in Ghana. Vol. 2. Accra:

Government Printer, Lands Department, 1957. Reissued 1968.

The impact of proposed land tenure reforms in Northern Ghana is the subject of a more recent article by:

GH16 Sheppard, Andrew. "Doubts about Land Tenure Reform." West

Africa, 3 April 1978, pp. 646-647.

Sheppard writes that the limbo of land administration between customary land tenure and a "modern land tenure system" has led to undesirable results. First, there has been an accumulation of large tracts of rice land in the hands of a few, with little benefit accruing to the communities from which the lands were taken.

Also, soil "mining" has decreased soil fertility in some areas. Sheppard also points out that by August 1977, only 80 farmers had registered

their farms (in the Dagbon region), and that none of these 80 were small "peasant" farmers.

Of use in tracking the actual numbers of land transactions is the following:

GH17 Ghana. Land and Concessions Bulletin, no. 3. Accra:

Government Printer, 1972.

The Bulletin was a regularly publisned gazette listing instruments regis- tered during the preceding month at the land registry in Kumasi and included leases, mortgages, and sales. However, there is no indication whether this document is still being published.

An item that appears useful, but which the reviewer was unable to obtain, is:

GH18 Hannigan, A.St.J. "The Question of Notice Under the Ghanaian System of Registration of Deeds." University of Ghana Law Journal, vol. 3, no. 1 (1966), pp. 27-36.

79GUINEA

There is no literature which discusses registered land in Guinea, although the process of registration itself is not unknown. Under French colonial rule, which lasted until 1958, it was possible to register land in both urban and rural areas. In the latter areas, it was most often large plantations that were registered, and the titles were, as a rule, in foreign hands. Sekou Toure, who presided over Guinea from 1958 to 1984, attempted to reverse this process and to enforce state ownership of land. Legislation provided that those working on the land might be granted subsidiary leasehold rights-- although to what extent this actually occurred is not clear. Since Touré's death, the government has begun to follow a program which calls for a lessening of the public sector's role in the economy and increasing privatization. This new emphasis, however, does not apparently extend to a program of land registration.

81 GUINEA-BISSAU,

In contrast to its other two colonies of Angola and Mozambique, Portugal did not use Guinea-Bissau as a settler colony and thus land use in large portions of the country remained relatively undisturbed. One of the results of this lack of intervention is that land regis- tration has never been introduced in the country. The customary tenure

systems establish that land is held collectively rather than individually. All legislation concerning land rights which the Portuguese goverment passed during the twentieth century theoretically applied to Guinea-Bissau as well as to the other two colonies, but since there were very few settlers, very few concessions were made.

After independence all land was nationalized. The new government's strategy has been to create producers' cooperatives. This strategy is to proceed slowly because the government believes that peasants should not be forced to adopt measures which are not familiar to them. Hence most of the people still hold land under customary systems. For this reason, there is no literature on land registration in Guinea-Bissau.

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IVORY COAST

Although there exists a system of titling in Ivory Coast, the state prefers to limit the duration of titles to E5-year, renewable leases. Titling is accomplished in stages, each step being provisional on development of the parcel. Despite the disagreement on the efficacy of such a system, over 30,000 titles had been granted by 1970, most of them in urban areas.

A general description of the legal process required for registration is provided in:

IC1 Bènetère, J.J. "Land Ownership in Developing Countries."

World Agriculture, vol. E6, no. E/3 (1977), pp. 4-7.

By law, 99 percent of the land in the Ivory Coast is "common" land belonging to the state, even though traditional users still occupy and work the land. To register land, one must first acquire an occupation permit or a provisional lease, which requires the user to develop the land within 5 years. At that time, a permanent grant or hereditary lease is given, guaranteeing the rights to that land for E5 years. Full ownership and title are theoretically possible, but rarely granted as the state prefers to maintain allocative con- trol.

According to Bénetiere, few people have been interested in following this procedure.

Another explanation of the system is provided by Ley, in:

ICE Ley, Albert. "L'Evolution du droit foncier ivoirien depuis l'indépendance du 7 août 1960." Paper presented at an International Congress at Montreux, Switzerland. Apeldoorn, Holland: Office International du Cadastre et du Régime Foncier, 1981.

Ley delves into the historical antecedents of state policy on registration and titling. He follows developments through various laws, most of which he believes to be attempts to reduce litigation and regularize the Lands Registry. Ley believes that state title to the country's land is retained as a means of discouraging speculation.

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An earlier discussion of his views is contained in:

IC3 Ley, Albert. "Conservation fonciere et ordinateur (1'ex-

rrience ivoirienne)." Revue Juridique et Politique, dependance, et Coopération, vol. E4, no. 4 (1970), pp. 719-722.

Ley states that contrary to Bénetiere's statements, demands for the provisional titles increased until 1970, by which time there were 30,000 titles already granted. Ley also mentions the utility of using computers as a means of easing the problems of a registration system.

The historical background to state policy on land registration and policy are laid out in great detail in the following book by Ley:

IC4 Ley, Albert. Le Regime Domanial et Foncier et le Déve- loppement Economique de la Côte d'Ivoire. Paris: Libra- rie Generale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, 197E.

Ley focuses on administrative and legal issues rather than on more concrete results or implications of policy for agricultural development, and the book is most valuable for its careful discussion of French colonial leg-

islation and policy in Ivory Coast and elsewhere and its examination of the E0 March 1963 agrarian reform law that was not promulgated. Ley believes that the slow pace of registration (in 50 years, he estimates that only about

2,000 square kilometers, or .60 percent of the total area, had been registered) has been fortunate, permitting the state to formulate and implement development policy in a way that would not have been possible if systematic registration of individual ownership had been carried out at an earlier date.

The actual state of the country's cadastre is given in:

IC5 Sadia, Duon. "Country Report, Ivory Coast." Paper pre-

sented at the United Nations Interregional Seminar on Cadastral Survey and Urban Mapping, West Berlin, E4 June- 5 July 1974.

Sadia states that 2,000 square kilometers had been surveyed through 1974, with concentration primarily in urban centers. He argues that surveying and

registration are necessary to promote investments because they are assumed to enchance security.