The government plans to leverage technology and other strategies to rectify land demarcation errors nationwide by 2027. By utilizing 10 GPS stations distributed nationwide, land demarcation errors will be corrected with an impressive accuracy of one to five centimetres. ALSO READ: Rwanda to deploy new system for improved land services In a presentation to the lower house’s committee on governance and gender affairs, on January 15, the Minister of Environment, Valentine Uwamariya, announced that starting January 24, additional GPS devices will be procured to enhance boundary data capture while efforts to identify demarcation errors continue across various districts. ALSO READ: Govt pledges to clear land subdivision service backlog in one month “Some districts including Nyagatare, Bugesera and City of Kigali, have already allocated budgets for the required materials. Meanwhile, Kayonza, Nyagatare and Kirehe are collaborating with partners to address boundary corrections. We are prioritizing areas with pressing issues and to accelerate the process, the Ministry of Environment and affiliated agencies will ensure that every implemented project incorporates the correction of demarcation errors,” she noted. Uwamariya emphasized that the correction of demarcation errors will be a nationwide effort with corrections carried out at district level. Each district will actively participate in identifying boundary issues to ensure that planning is based on accurate data. So far, Eastern Province has collected the necessary information and is now considering strategies for correcting the errors. Although the number of errors to address exceeds the capacity of available surveyors and land notaries, we plan to augment the workforce by involving interns with surveying backgrounds and engaging private surveyors,” she added. Responding to lawmakers’ questions regarding why Rwamagana, Musanze and Bugesera districts account for 80% of land service requests, Grace Nishimwe, the Director General and Chief Registrar of Land Titles at National Land Authority (NLA), explained that these districts have a higher number of land parcel buyers compared to others. To address this demand, NLA hired 40 additional contractors with 10 assigned to each of the three districts and the remaining 10 distributed among other districts. ALSO READ: How automation of 10 land services solved accessibility issues When MP Deogratias Nzamwita wondered whether the task would be completed within two years, Uwamariya assured lawmakers that all demarcation errors will be corrected by 2027. She emphasized that demarcation is not the only challenge in land services and that efforts will extend to other related issues with a goal to resolve them all within five years. ALSO READ: Minister of Environment explains what’s being done to accelerate land subdivision services According to statistics from the Ministry of Environment, there are over 12,000,000 land parcels nationwide. During the 2024/2025 fiscal year, 8,696 demarcation errors were corrected across 10 districts. Since Rwanda began using Irembo for land service delivery, 26,000 files have been uploaded supplementing those submitted physically. To manage the growing number of land files, the ministry hired 152 private notaries and 280 private surveyors to address the issue effectively. Nationwide, there are 416 sector land managers, 30 district one-stop center lawyers, five land registration officers at NLA and six registrars of land titles. Since January 2023, over 1.5 million electronic land titles have been downloaded, with the number increasing daily. However, approximately 13% (around 1,371,951) of the total demarcated lands are still registered provisionally under the Government of Rwanda due to their owners either failing to register them or remaining unidentified.
