The Dream of Ghana's Electronic Conveyancing

Land acquisition and title registration in Ghana will soon to see a dramatic technological transformation. The current system of buying, selling and registering land which is bedevilled with bureaucracy, insecurity, long delays and high cost will soon change dramatically.

If what I read and hear will indeed come to pass, then, Ghanaians will soon be buying, selling and registering title to land on the internet, probably, through their e-mails.

You will just need a computer connected to the internet. Make some few keystrokes and mouse clicks. Fill a paperless form. Send an email requesting to buy, sell or register title to a piece of land and, there you are. Within minutes, a valid land title certificate downloadable from your inbox will be ready. Simple!

That is the magic of electronic conveyancing or e-conveyancing.
E-conveyancing is a computerised land registration system in which land transactions are processed through the use of the internet from the initial stages of the acquisition to the final stage of registration. It’s like the online stock trading on the Ghana Stock Exchange.

It is simple, fast, and cheap. With e-conveyancing, the bureaucracy and long delays in registering land will be history, a thing of the past. E-conveyancing shortens the time of registration from months to minutes. It saves manpower, buries bureaucratic delays, makes registration simple due to standardization, and improves accessibility of the general public to land title registration. The availability of land information will also improve dramatically due to use of the internet.

E-conveyancing will consolidate land acquisition and make title registration accessible from remote areas. It will bring Lands Commission to every house that has a computer connected to the internet. It will make land registration accessible on every mobile phone with an internet and at the internet café where you live.

But the positive showers of e-conveyancing may not fall unless the proposed Lands Bill, which is currently receiving stakeholder consultations, is finally passed into law. The Bill, when it becomes law, will make it possible for people to buy, sell and register title to land on the internet within munities, and such transactions will be lawful and valid.

I must say that the Lands Bill is a pregnancy of the Land Administration Project (LAP). It is a draft law taking its life from the womb of the LAP. Among others, it seeks to revise and consolidate laws on land in order to harmonise land policies with existing customary. This is to ensure sustainable land administration and management and effective land tenure. It is this proposed law that seeks to legalise online land transactions and registration.

E-conveyancing is a laudable idea. When I first read about it I was enthused. So I went straight on the internet for more information. Within seconds of a browsing, Australia, Canada, British Columbia, United Kingdom, Scotland, the United States of America was caught in the web as among countries across the globe that were experimenting with e-conveyancing.
I realised that responses from the people of these countries were overwhelming.

Of course, naturally, most land buyers will be attracted to a land registration system that is simple, cheap, fast and safe. That is why the Torrens system of land registration is still the toast of most land administrators the world over even after it was developed about 155 years ago. And e-conveyancing will make it even more accessible and allow transactions to be completed as swiftly as the presidential entourage in Ghana, no clog of traffic. I think this is an innovation Ghana should embrace.

I am envisaging that, within a comparatively short time, when the Lands Bill is successfully passed into law, electronic conveyancing will be the only means by which land may be bought and sold.

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