Reconciling Cadastral Records in a Dual Land Registration System in Ghana

Abstract

Soon after gaining independence, the Ghana government adopted a deed registration system for recording land ownership. A legislative instrument supported this decision. The deficiencies of the deed registration system resulted in innumerable cases of land ownership disputes. Juxtaposed with the official registration system is the customary land tenure system, which authorized custodians of the stool lands to allocate parcels through the customary process. Because the customary system did not mandate documentary evidence of the transaction, the allocation process created situations where the same parcel of land was allocated to multiple owners. The weaknesses in the two systems engendered lucrative, illegal and unrecorded land market activities. With increasing population and associated competing interests in available land, it became imperative for the government to review the existing legislation for recording and maintaining records of land parcel ownership. A new legislation was promulgated, based on a land title registration system. While efforts are being made to improve the customary land allocation process, the new legislation seeks to remove the deficiencies in the deed registration system. The introduction of the title registration system has resulted in a duality of the
record keeping process. Efforts are currently under way to remove the inconsistencies in the deed records and to reconcile them with those that have been obtained through the title registration system. This paper reviews the cadastral surveying activities and the processes for recording land titles in Ghana in view of existing laws. Experiences in developing procedures for reconciling the records from the two systems are also discussed.

Keywords: Cadastral survey, land records, land tenure, registration, survey regulation

Journal of Science and Technology Vol. 28 (1) 2008 pp. 128-135