The Development Information Services Division (DISD) hosted a one-day seminar on “End-to-End Cadastral Solutions for Economic Development” on Friday, October 07, 2005 in the UNCC.

“Cadastre” is the technical term for the system of maintaining public registers of interests in land, to support land transactions and general land administration.

The seminar was aimed at sharing informing on new trends in cadastral systems and was part of an ongoing traveling series to be hosted in different African countries.

Co-organized by ECA and Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) - based in California the seminar attracted approximately 60 participants from various government and non-government agencies based in Ethiopia. Additional institutions included Swedesurvey, International Land Systems of Virginia, Oakar Services of Nairobi and Information Systems Services of Addis Ababa.

In his keynote presentation, Mr. Dozie Ezigbalike, Team Leader of the Geoinformation Team, explained that managing the complex relationships that exist between individuals, groups and organizations in a society requires information about the proprietary units or parcels of land, the rights that exist in them, their capabilities and potentials.

“Land parcels are fixed at their natural location, and cannot be removed and stored for safe-keeping, like other objects of property”. He said, adding that they are also continuous and contiguous with one another.

He noted that these characteristics make it necessary for any registration or information system dealing with land to include maps, which should be of large enough scale for better representation of all parcels of land in a jurisdiction.

He argued that the cadastre principles should be modified to cater for the needs of rural land management, where the expected benefits of having such public land registers would include enhancing the security of tenure and the land market.

For more information on this and other Geoinformation issues,contact: Dozie Ezigbalike (czigbalike@uneca.org) or visit http://www.uneca.org/disd