Investigating the potential of blockchain technoloy in transforming Uganda's land registries.
Abstract
The purpose of the study was to investigate the potential of blockchain technology in transforming
Uganda’s land registries. The land registry is one of the most important departments in any
governance system because it stores the records of ownership. There are a number of loopholes in
the current system, which give rise to corruption and disputes. This has discouraged people from
registering their land, which makes it hard for the government to plan and reduces revenue from
land. Blockchain has the potential to counter these loopholes and sort out issues like trading the
same piece of land to more than one buyer and tampering with land records. In this study, a
framework for land registry system using Blockchain was proposed. The framework uses the
concept of smart contracts at various stages of the land registry. The study outlines the potential
benefits of employing Blockchain technology in the land registry system and presents a number
of case studies.
The target population of this study was 13 technical officials from Kampala City Council
Authority Ministry Zonal Office, 66 values and 1 official from the Blockchain association of
Uganda. Data for the purposes of this research was collected using questionnaires, which were
uniform to all the respondents.
Study findings indicated that the land registry system is plagued with a number of concerns like
falsification of documents, delays in executing transactions, poor management of land records and
inability to access land related information. As a result, people have been discouraged from
registering their land. For this reason, this study proposed a framework to offer reliable, safe and
accurate means through which interested parties could register land, transfer it and access land
related information.