Zambia

<ul style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" text-align="text-align" center="center" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><li class="hidden-xs" style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; list-style-type: none; padding: 0px 0px 23px; line-height: 1.33;">===</li><li class="hidden-xs" style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; list-style-type: none; padding: 0px 0px 23px; line-height: 1.33;"><a href="https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/blog/land-unchained">https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/blog/land-unchained</a></li><li class="hidden-xs" style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; list-style-type: none; padding: 0px 0px 23px; line-height: 1.33;">...Challenging the Assumptions of Blockchain Land TitlingMost of the land on the planet is not registered under a system of private titles. Globally, up to <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://rightsandresources.org/wp-content/uploads/GlobalBaseline_web.pdf" data-extlink="" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; box-shadow: rgb(215, 190, 142) 0px -2px 0px inset;">65 percent of land<span class="ext" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-image: url("/sites/all/modules/extlink/images/extlink_s.png"); background-position: 2px center; background-size: initial; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; width: 10px; height: 10px; padding-right: 12px;">(link is external)</a> is governed by local communities or Indigenous People through collective or customary tenure systems. Across the Global South, land registries are often incomplete, as governments only recognize a fraction of these lands under customary systems, officially demarcating them as government-owned, public land. So while <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.landesa.org/who-we-are/" data-extlink="" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; box-shadow: rgb(215, 190, 142) 0px -2px 0px inset;">three quarters of the world’s poorest people live in rural areas where land is a key asset, over a billion of these people<span class="ext" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-image: url("/sites/all/modules/extlink/images/extlink_s.png"); background-position: 2px center; background-size: initial; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; width: 10px; height: 10px; padding-right: 12px;">(link is external)</a> lack legal documents formalizing their ownership of the land. In Sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.landesa.org/what-we-do/sub-saharan-africa/" data-extlink="" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; box-shadow: rgb(215, 190, 142) 0px -2px 0px inset;">90 percent<span class="ext" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-image: url("/sites/all/modules/extlink/images/extlink_s.png"); background-position: 2px center; background-size: initial; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; width: 10px; height: 10px; padding-right: 12px;">(link is external)</a> of rural land is not formally documented. This lack of formal documentation is however not seen as a problem for many, who consider land – like water – as a common good, with high social and cultural values, that must be shared and preserved for current and future generations.For blockchain technology to be used in the administration of land, claims over land ownership first would have to be determined, documented, and verified. The World Bank, one of the major proponents of the use of blockchain for land registration, <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/keeping-it-clean-can-blockchain-change-nature-land-registry-developing-countries" data-extlink="" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; box-shadow: rgb(215, 190, 142) 0px -2px 0px inset;">claims<span class="ext" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-image: url("/sites/all/modules/extlink/images/extlink_s.png"); background-position: 2px center; background-size: initial; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; width: 10px; height: 10px; padding-right: 12px;">(link is external)</a> that countries without the required records need simply to “clean up” their registry in order to make blockchain work. However, this “clean up” is a much larger and more expensive undertaking than suggested by the Bank, given it requires “documenting” rights in the first instance, demarcating parcel boundaries,resolving disputes, and, establishing the necessary procedures and laws for a“modern” land administration infrastructure. As recently as 2018, <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-landrights-technology/technology-holds-promise-but-no-silver-bullet-for-land-rights-world-bank-idUSKBN1GW0CC" data-extlink="" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; box-shadow: rgb(215, 190, 142) 0px -2px 0px inset;">only a third of all countries<span class="ext" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-image: url("/sites/all/modules/extlink/images/extlink_s.png"); background-position: 2px center; background-size: initial; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; width: 10px; height: 10px; padding-right: 12px;">(link is external)</a> – including just two in Sub Saharan Africa – maintained land records digitally. In many countries where legal institutions are weak or susceptible to corruption, the process of formalizing ownership claims through individual titles can do <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.prindex.net/reports/global-perceptions-tenure-security-looking-beyond-formalisation-property-rights/" data-extlink="" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; box-shadow: rgb(215, 190, 142) 0px -2px 0px inset;">little to improve tenure security<span class="ext" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-image: url("/sites/all/modules/extlink/images/extlink_s.png"); background-position: 2px center; background-size: initial; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; width: 10px; height: 10px; padding-right: 12px;">(link is external)</a>, allow governments to solidify their claims to “vacant” land, and make it available for “investment,” as detailed in <a rel="noreferrer" href="https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/driving-dispossession" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; box-shadow: rgb(215, 190, 142) 0px -2px 0px inset;">Driving Dispossession</a>.Zambia, one of the most advanced countries in the application of blockchain technology for land titling is clearly on this path to privatization. At the time of independence in 1964, there was <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://landportal.org/library/resources/contestation-confusion-and-corruption" data-extlink="" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; box-shadow: rgb(215, 190, 142) 0px -2px 0px inset;">no private land in Zambia<span class="ext" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-image: url("/sites/all/modules/extlink/images/extlink_s.png"); background-position: 2px center; background-size: initial; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; width: 10px; height: 10px; padding-right: 12px;">(link is external)</a>, with 94 percent of the country under customary tenure and the remaining six percent under state control. This started to change in the early 1990s, when the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) required the government to change <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/midcwp/229597.html" data-extlink="" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; box-shadow: rgb(215, 190, 142) 0px -2px 0px inset;">land laws towards privatization<span class="ext" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-image: url("/sites/all/modules/extlink/images/extlink_s.png"); background-position: 2px center; background-size: initial; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; width: 10px; height: 10px; padding-right: 12px;">(link is external)</a> as a condition for the restructuring of its international debt.As a result of this and subsequent legal changes, Zambia saw a <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/midcwp/229597.html" data-extlink="" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; box-shadow: rgb(215, 190, 142) 0px -2px 0px inset;">drastic reduction of customary land<span class="ext" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-image: url("/sites/all/modules/extlink/images/extlink_s.png"); background-position: 2px center; background-size: initial; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; width: 10px; height: 10px; padding-right: 12px;">(link is external)</a>, from 94 percent to less than 60 percent today.This so-called formalization of land tenure resulted in shifting the control over land from people to the government, thereby making it available for lease to private interests. In the years after the <a rel="noreferrer" href="https://oaklandinstitute.org/sites/oaklandinstitute.org/files/driving-dispossession.pdf#page=11" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; box-shadow: rgb(215, 190, 142) 0px -2px 0px inset;">Lands Act</a> was passed, conversions of customary land to leasehold increased, displacement became common, and while investors reaped the benefits, local villagers suffered through <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.184.397&rep=rep1&type=pdf" data-extlink="" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; box-shadow: rgb(215, 190, 142) 0px -2px 0px inset;">“social and economic exclusion, elite capture, displacement, intra-community conflict, and the enclosure of common pool resources.”<span class="ext" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-image: url("/sites/all/modules/extlink/images/extlink_s.png"); background-position: 2px center; background-size: initial; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; width: 10px; height: 10px; padding-right: 12px;">(link is external)</a><aside class="callout" style="box-sizing: inherit; position: relative; margin: 1.5em 0px; padding: 1.5rem; border: 1px solid rgba(10, 10, 10, 0.25); border-radius: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h3 style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; font-weight: 400; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.25; margin-top: 0px !important;">Early Lessons from Blockchain Land Titling Raise Red Flags</h3>Despite the security that blockchain technology is supposed to provide, it assumes the information regarding ownership claims that is collected and entered is accurate. As they decide to introduce blockchain land titling programs, governments will be responsible for allocating significant resources and determining procedures to implement the technology in a way that ensures the information collected and entered is accurate and safeguarded from corruption.

The early lessons from the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh’s blockchain titling program however reveal how corruption can still occur.<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://qz.com/india/1325423/indias-andhra-state-is-using-blockchain-to-build-capital-amaravati/" data-extlink="" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; box-shadow: rgb(215, 190, 142) 0px -2px 0px inset;"> The program(link is external)</a>, which documented the land claims of 24,000 farmers across 22 villages, was hailed as cost-effective way of providing a tamper-proof, secure system to document land claims. While the technology itself has proven secure, farmers have raised the alarm that bribery to land registry offices continues and results in manipulated entries into the blockchain. An Andhra Pradesh government official estimated that nearly <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://qz.com/india/1325423/indias-andhra-state-is-using-blockchain-to-build-capital-amaravati/" data-extlink="" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; box-shadow: rgb(215, 190, 142) 0px -2px 0px inset;">US$700 million was paid in bribes across land registrars in India(link is external)</a> in 2017 alone. Similarly in Kenya, early efforts to implement blockchain titling have been <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.capitalfm.co.ke/news/2020/07/lands-ministry-preps-for-massive-ownership-disputes-as-transition-to-digital-lands-registry-begins/" data-extlink="" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; box-shadow: rgb(215, 190, 142) 0px -2px 0px inset;">delayed(link is external)</a> by numerous disputes over parcels of land with multiple titles and <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kenya-land-corruption/kenya-to-purge-land-ministry-of-corrupt-cartels-official-idUSKCN12C264" data-extlink="" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; box-shadow: rgb(215, 190, 142) 0px -2px 0px inset;">widespread corruption(link is external)</a> within the Ministry of Lands. Despite the theoretical ways blockchain can reduce corruption, technology alone will not overcome these entrenched governance issues as demonstrated by these early cases.

Lastly, the security offered by the technology is not absolute. While instances of blockchain security breaches are rare, they do still occur. In 2016, a high-profile Ethereum smart wallet was hacked. The target of the hack, known as DAO, had US$60 million worth of cryptocurrency assets frozen. Given the decentralized nature of the technology, no single registrar can fix the error, demonstrating that the <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://cadasta.org/blockchain-for-land-administration-hype-or-substance/" data-extlink="" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; box-shadow: rgb(215, 190, 142) 0px -2px 0px inset;">impact of a hacked land registry(link is external)</a> would be catastrophic....</aside></li><li class="hidden-xs" style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; list-style-type: none; padding: 0px 0px 23px; line-height: 1.33;">Ultimately, shifting land registries to blockchain requires countries to move towards systems of private land ownership, which will require registration and digitalization. All of the 25 ongoing blockchain land projects around the world are focused on providing individual titles to land while ignoring the millions of hectares managed under customary or collective tenure systems. Thus, blockchain does nothing to help countries that maintain communal land systems and who have abstained from privatizing land and instead encourages countries to move towards individual, private land ownership. The process of transferring land away from customary systems to facilitate blockchain private titles risks further marginalizing disadvantaged groups and allowing wealthy and powerful interests to access and solidify their claims to land that does not belong to them...</li><li class="hidden-xs" style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; list-style-type: none; padding: 0px 0px 23px; line-height: 1.33;">=</li><li class="hidden-xs" style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; list-style-type: none; padding: 0px 0px 23px; line-height: 1.33;"><a data-ga-action="Home Headlines: Headline" href="https://www.democracynow.org/2019/8/16/headlines/huawei_accused_of_helping_uganda_zambia_spy_on_political_dissidents" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; border: 0px;">Huawei Accused of Helping Uganda & Zambia Spy on Political Dissidents</a></li><li class="hidden-xs" style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; list-style-type: none; padding: 0px 0px 23px; line-height: 1.33;">==</li></ul>