The demarcation and adjudication of land all over the country is 100 per cent complete, according to an official at Rwanda Natural Resources Authority (RNRA).Eng. Didier Sagashya, the Deputy Director General for Land and Mapping, told The New Times Monday that the exercise went on as scheduled.“We have registered 10.3 million land parcels.What remains now is the completion of issuance of land titles,” he said.Land demarcation and adjudication was supposed to end by June this year while the issuing of land titles is set to be ended by December 2013.In 2004, the government enacted an organic law on land to guarantee a safe and stable form of land tenure. Before that, the country never had a proper land policy.In order to define and decide how the land registration process should be carried out, a Ministerial Decree determining modalities of registration was enacted in 2008 and a year later, land registration process kicked off.Article 30 of the Land Law stipulates that registration of land any person owns is obligatory. It allows owners to get legal documents and clarify their land rights, which increases their land tenure security.Sagashya stated that out of 10.3 million parcels registered, 10,600 families with land wrangles have been recorded in a book dedicated to land disputes.“We shall wait for these people to settle their disputes to establish who has the right on the land either through mediators or courts, before the land is registered on them,” he said.He added that after the disputes are resolved, the rightful owner of the land presents a court order to have their land registered. Most of the land conflicts encountered are largely among family members who fail to agree on sharing their land, especially in polygamous families.Sagashya said they have printed about four million land titles, out of which 1.6 million have been issued to the owners.One of the benefits of land registration is efficient, transparent and equitable system of land administration where people use their own land as a security to acquire loans from banks.
