Land registration in Ghana goes digital in 2018 — Dr Bawumia

Government will from next year digitise land registration processes in the country as part of measures to prevent double sale of land, the Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has revealed.

He said with the introduction of digital land registration systems, it would help people to check and verify the original owners of lands before buying them.

“We really want to focus on the land sector and digitize our records on lands”, he said, adding that “every part of the land registration process would be digitised”.

Innovation week
The Vice President was speaking at the official opening of the 2017 Innovation Week organised by the Ghana- India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in Accra.

The three-day event is on the theme: “Exponential technologies and innovations; an enabler in socio-economic development of Ghana”.

Dr Bawumia, however, said the government would need Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) to develop the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector in the country.

Exponential technologies
Touching on the event, he said, exponential technologies have come to redefine the way we do things and work, hence the need for the country to take advantage of the numerous benefits the industry presents.

He said government would explore the opportunities in technologies to grow the country’s economy.

Dr Bawumia said government believes in ICT development, hence the government’s commitment to the ICT sector by introducing the ICT Development policy.

He said the ICT Development policy “is one that will see to the realization of government’s vision to transform the country into an information based economy” to facilitate the country’s development.

He added that development of an information-based economy would help enhance the country’s growth strategies by helping to overcome fiscal limitations.
Conducive environment

Dr Bawumia said the government would create an enabling environment through its policies to give equal opportunities to all Ghanaians in the commercialization of exponential technologies.

He said many countries have made and continue to make huge sums of foreign exchange from ICT, and pointed to India as one of such countries.

He explained that the introduction of the digital addressing system, digital driving license, digital vehicle registration, digital registration of businesses, and paperless ports all attest to the government’s commitment to utilise the opportunities of ICT to develop the country.

“We want to ensure that the cost of access to ICT resources comes down in the country”, Dr Bawumia said.

The Kofi Annan-India Centre of Excellence also known as the Advanced Information Technology Institute (aiti) was set up by the governments of Ghana and India to initially bridge the gap between academia and industry by training people to acquire requisite skills to help meet demands of the job market.

KACE plea
The Director-General of the centre, Mr Kwasi Adu-Gyan said the centre was positioning itself to take advantage of the opportunities in the exponential technologies.

He said the centre would continue to pursue its core mandate and called on the government to enact laws to regulate the activities of the institute.

Mr Adu-Gyan said the institute could mobilise money to run its own activities and also support government’s coffers if it is allowed to recruit its own staff with the needed competences.