Land Registeration Systems in Ethiopia
Land Registeration Systems in Ethiopia
U. Lennart Frej1
1. Background
On July 15, 2005 the Federal Government of Ethiopia issued Proclamation 456/2005 on
Land Administration and Use.
---
Whereas, it is deemed necessary to put in place legal conditions which are conducive
to enhance and strengthen the land use right of farmers to encourage them to take
necessary conservation measures in areas where mixed farming of crop and animal
production is prevalent and where there is threat of soil erosion and forest degradation;
In order to achieve these objectives the land holdings that the Proclamation speaks of
have to be unambiguously defined and referenced in the interest of strengthening the
farmers rights as well as in the interest of environmental up-grading and protection.
The identification and accurate description of real property units and their relation to
neighbouring properties is essential if land markets are to operate smoothly and openly
for the benefit of all. Real property identifiers provide a link between the various
components of a land market. A clear definition of what is to be transacted and where it is
located is central to the land development process. Failure to identify the ownership and
rights surrounding real property units has had disastrous consequences in many
development programmes, especially those designed to help low-income communities
(UNECE 2004).
1
Lennart Frey is the Land Titling and Cadastral Systems Specialist at ELTAP.
2
Translation published in the Federal Negarit Gazeta.
116 Standardization of Rural Land Registration and Cadastral Surveying Methodologies
The quote above refers to ownership, real property and land markets in a free market
economy. It is nevertheless applicable to the current situation in Ethiopia. Ownership can
easily be substituted for user rights, real property for parcels/holdings. Although it may
not be correct from a political or juridical point of view to talk about a land market in
Ethiopia, transactions concerning parcels and rights connected to these do occur. Also
the objects for user rights must be identified and described in order to secure tenure for
the benefit of the user in right as well as for society at large.
E c o n o m ic - S o c ia l - E n v ir o n m e n ta l
S U S T A IN A B L E D E V E L O P M E N T
O BJECT LAND
O BJECT LAND USE
VALUE DEVELOP-
TENURE
MENT
T it le s A ssessm ent of P o lic ie s a n d
M o rtg a g e s C o n s tr u c tio n
P r o p e r t y V a lu e S p a t ia l P la n n in g a n d
E a s e m e n ts P la n n in g P e r m its
R e g u la tio n s
S e c u re L e g a l and
C o lle c t io n o f C o n tro l o f L a n d Im p le m e n t a t io n
R ig h t s P ro p e rty T a x Use
CADSTRE
M a p s & R e g is te r
Id e n tific a t io n o f O b je c ts
2. Objectives
This paper will highlight the requirements on parcel identifiers and describe different
identifiers and their usefulness for land registration and information sharing. It will also
give some examples from the newly independent states of Central and Eastern Europe
and from some African states presently engaged in modernizing old systems or
introducing new systems due to new technical demands.
3. Introduction
The title of this paper reads Issues and Improvements in the Parcel Identification
System for the Land Administration System in Ethiopia. The parcel identifier serves to
uniquely determine and define the entity of land to be demarcated on the ground,
registered and to which legal rights can be attached. The parcel is also the object to be
described on the cadastral index map and for which a certificate is issued.
U. Lennart Frej. Issues and Improvements in the Parcel Identification System 117
The relationship between the identifier and the object to be referenced is either a one to
one relation or a one to many relation as shown in Fig.3 below. What has been chosen in
different countries is based on tradition and what was practical at the time the decision
was made.
To be able to continue we need to clarify and define some basic terms. The attempt at
definitions that follows is based on the Proclamation and the UNECE Guidelines on Real
Property Units and Identifiers (RPUI). They are primarily valid for land registration.
Definitions
First of all it should be noted that the new federal Proclamation 465/2005 offers few
definitions that are relevant to land registration and when it does, they are mostly
imprecise. The Proclamation uses, e.g., the term land holding, but does not define it.
In the Ethiopian context the term land holding seems to be used both to indicate a single
parcel and the total number of parcels included in the certificate, as a right holder
usually has more than one parcel in the rural areas. The parcel is the smallest land entity
to be demarcated, registered in the Registry Books and recorded in the certificate. So,
from this point of view the term land holding is not unambiguous.
A parcel can be divided into plots. The Proclamation, e.g., Article 11.1 talks of a farm
plot, this seems to correspond to parcel rather than plot according to the RPUI
definition.
According to the Guidelines, a plot is defined by the crop that grows on it. Registration
of plots is not a task for land registration.
Land registration is defined as the process of recording rights in land either in the form
of registration of deeds or else through the registration of title to land3. The Proclamation
has a similar definition. Article 2.15 states land registration[is] the process whereby
information on the expression of rural land use right and holding is gathered and
analyzed.
3
Definitions extracted from the Glossary of Terms in the UNECE Guidelines on Real Property
Units and Identifiers and Land Administration Guidelines.
118 Standardization of Rural Land Registration and Cadastral Surveying Methodologies
Basic property unit A land parcel (see below) or group Holding, i.e., the parcel/s that
of land parcels in one ownership. are described in a holders
certificate. Article 6.1
Fig. 2 illustrates the relationship between a basic property unit / land holding, a parcel
and the plot according to the terminology of RPUI.
In the following PIS is proposed to mean (basic) property identification5 system, i.e., the
identification of the total land holding.
4
Definitions extracted from the Glossary of Terms in the UNECE Guidelines on Real Property
Units and Identifiers.
5
Identification system and referencing system/code are used as synonyms in this paper.
U. Lennart Frej. Issues and Improvements in the Parcel Identification System 119
3.2 Permutations
Not only the user of a land holding may change. The land holding itself may change due
to consolidation, inheritance, gift etc. There are some common measures that may be
undertaken in most systems. These are amalgamation, subdivision and re-allotment. The
issue of whether the land holding consists of one or more parcels is not important in this
case.
Amalgamation: Amalgamation is the process whereby two or more land holdings are
merged to form a new land holding. A new land holding is created and is given a new
unique identifier. See Fig 3 below.
Fig. 3. Amalgamation.
Fig.4. Re-allotment.
120 Standardization of Rural Land Registration and Cadastral Surveying Methodologies
Fig. 5. Subdivision.
The reference chosen should be easy to understand and easy to remember; easy to use for
the public and by computers; permanent so that it does not change with the sale of a
property, but capable of being updated when there is for example a subdivision of the
land; unique; accurate; and economic to introduce (FAO 1995).
To this it could be added that the identifier should be the same for all land within a
nation, rural and urban, and be independent of who owns the land. This will facilitate
necessary changes of administrative boundaries, information exchange and compilation
of national statistics. It should also contribute to uphold transparency to the benefit of the
holder, as it makes it clear that a holding that, for example, is about to be expropriated or
transferred from rural to municipal jurisdiction, is the same as it was before the
expropriation claim and the rights of the holder are also intact until the expropriation has
been finalized.
U. Lennart Frej. Issues and Improvements in the Parcel Identification System 121
These requirements have been widely recognized and also been put forth and adopted by
UNECE Land Administration Guidelines (LAG), the RPUI and individual writers, e.g.,
Larsson (1991).
Which are then the benefits of a national PIS established, accepted and used by different
sectors in society?
Apart from correctly and authoritatively identifying the object to which legally
recognized and protected rights are connected, proper identification indirectly, through
its use in the land registration process, serves a number of other areas of social and
economic activities:
Benefits arise through its application to: asset management; conveyancing; credit
security; demographic analysis; development control; emergency planning and
management; environmental impact assessment; housing transactions and land market
analysis; land and property ownership; land and property taxation; land reform;
monitoring statistical data; physical planning; property portfolio management; public
communication; site location; site management and protection (UNECE 1996).
6
The list is taken from the book Land Information Management. In Land Administration, points 3
and 4 have been amalgamated.
122 Standardization of Rural Land Registration and Cadastral Surveying Methodologies
The PIS can serve as a link between data sources and facilitate data exchange, cross
referencing and processing, thus avoiding duplication of information in various registers
that does not communicate or are difficult and time consuming to retrieve information
from.
Once the object, in the case of Ethiopia the holding, has been defined it is necessary to
decide on the object reference or identifier. Referencing the object of a land use right can
be done in a number of ways depending on historical reasons and the purpose for which
the referencing system was designed.
The following are some examples: the name of the buyer and seller, the title registration
number, volume and folio number, subdivision / district name and parcel number, block
and parcel number, object address, coordinates.
As Ethiopia is in the process of automating its land registration process only those
referencing methods relevant and practical in a modern automated system will be
presented:
Block-and-plot numbering system,
Coordinate or geocode system,
Street addresses.
The choice of either system does not mean that information about the holding right can
not be retrieved using other references, such as users name, provided it is sufficiently
unique, passport or social security number however, the latter two are not applicable to
Ethiopia since most Ethiopians have neither passports nor social security numbers the
address of the holding, etc. The street address is, at this moment, not useful since most
streets in Ethiopian Cities have no names. A proposal for an addressing system for Africa
has been put forth in a discussion paper from UNECA (UNECA 2005). Addis Ababa
City has issued guidelines on street addresses for the city.
Block-and-plot numbering system: Block and plot numbering systems are similar to
systems using sub-division or district name and parcel number. The difference is that
block and plot-numbering systems are independent of the administrative boundaries that
the sub-division systems are based on. This can be an advantage if the administrative
authorities are prone to often make changes in the administrative division of the country.
This referencing model fulfills most of the requirements advocated by Dale &
McLaughlin (1998) and others.
Coordinate or geocode system: This can be based on latitude and longitude or more
commonly on the national grid used for small-scale mapping. Technically they are very
exact, but they miss most of the other requirements related to transparency, practicality
and easiness of use. A boundary can be represented by a string of coordinates taken for
each corner or twist of the boundary. A whole parcel can be given a reference by
choosing a one point within it, usually the assumed centroid coordinate. The accuracy is
dependant on how many digits are used.
U. Lennart Frej. Issues and Improvements in the Parcel Identification System 123
Coordinates fall short of most of the requirements generally accepted in the doctrine.
They are not very well suited as primary keys. Their usefulness is also dependant on the
accuracy of the measurement and the area of the object.
4. Current Situation
This section contains a brief survey of PIS adopted or under discussion in some countries
in Europe and Africa. It is by no means comprehensive and it is based on a small survey
for the purpose of this paper.
The development in the countries that were part of the Soviet block is of interest since
they, after the fall of the Soviet Union and break-away from socialist plan economy, all
have introduced either private ownership to land or long-term user rights. In some
countries the State has retained ownership of the land (at least the agricultural land) and
in some countries the market is restricted in similar ways as in Ethiopia. These countries
have all gone through similar processes in determining their identification systems as
that now begun in Ethiopia and they have come up with national solutions that are
slightly different. There are, however, similarities. The RPUI contains some tables
illustrating the models chosen by different countries.
To the question Can a basic property unit (holding) consist of more than one parcel?
The following answers were given:
Out of the eight countries that responded to the enquiry six countries responded
positively for basic property unit to consist more than one parcel.
In response to another question concerning the type of identifier that had been chosen
countries gave the following answer:
consists of five digits: provincial code (first digit); competent district court (second
and third digits); and cadastral unit (last 2 digits). The codes remain unique keys in
the sense of a database system even when mergers of administrative offices occur.)
DENMARK:
The Danish cadastral identifier is a compound of a number and small letters, like 2df.
Each parcel has a unique number within a specific defined area. Prior to April 2001,
the same number could be attached to several parcels within the same area, but now
each parcel must have a unique number within a specific defined area. The
numbering system does not apply to all parts of Denmark for historical reasons.
FINLAND :
BPU ID: 123-223-3-44
(Municipal code, location code, group code (block or house), unit code (lot or
register unit.)
GREECE:
Parcel ID: 22-333-22-22-333
(Prefecture (2 digits)-municipality (3)-cadastral sector (2)-cadastral section (2)-
parcel (3).)
LATVIA:
Parcel ID: 01000030002
(0100 = code of cadastral territory; 003 = code of cadastral group; 0002 = unique
number in cadastral group (from 0001 - 9999).)
LITHUANIA:
Parcel ID: 4400-0004-4230 (the unique code)
(Each land parcel has a unique number consisting of 12 digits including 1 control
number. The digits have no special significance.)
Cadastral address: 5203/0003:4
(5203 = code of cadastral unit; 0003 = code of block; 4 = parcel number in the block
(unique within the block).
RUSSIAN FEDERATION:
Parcel ID: 50:13:03:001 is the first parcel in cadastre block 3 in Chimki rayon (13 =
the number of the cadastre rayon) in Moscow region (50 = number of cadastre
okrug).
SWEDEN:
Parcel ID: Haninge Svarts 3:49 where the municipality, township or village is
named, followed by the block number and BPU number.
As can be seen from the above examples most of the NIS-countries have chosen to let a
BPU/holding consist of more than one parcel and they have chosen some kind of
hierarchical block-parcel numbering system.
U. Lennart Frej. Issues and Improvements in the Parcel Identification System 125
There is no comprehensive compilation on the situation in African states like the one
mentioned in the previous section concerning the NIS countries.
For the purpose of this paper the writer has made a small survey of some African
countries where it has been possible to get up-to-date and reliable information. It should
be noted that discussions are going on in several African countries on how to reform
their present identification systems that mostly date back to the colonial days. These
discussions are mostly driven by automation requirements and the demand from the
system design point of view for strictly logical and easy to handle referencing systems.
To the question Can a basic property unit (holding) consist of more than one parcel?
The following answers were given:
Out of the countries that responded to the enquiry only one country responded in favour
of basic property unit to consist more than one parcel.
In response to another enquiry concerning the type of identifier they had chosen, the
countries gave the following answer.
Ghana
SG/AS/001/2006/numbers of the corner beacons. The Beacon numbers that
demarcate the parcel are:
SG = Survey of Ghana
AS = Regional Code
001 = job number
2006 = the year the survey was carried out
Uganda
There is a proposal for a hierarchical identifier built from district/block/plot no.
Zambia
Surveyor General Allotment Area Code/Erf-Farm No/Portion No.
126 Standardization of Rural Land Registration and Cadastral Surveying Methodologies
4.3 Ethiopia
Only the ELTAP focus regions will be discussed as these are presently the only regional
states undertaking registration in the near future.
SNNP and Tigray use a system of identification based on recording the household
number and names of the neighboring holders. This works well in the local context
during the adjudication procedure and can even be preferable from the point of
understandability and transparency in favor of the farmers. However, it is not suitable for
an automated system as the identifier is neither stable nor unique. If the neighbors
change, the identifier changes.
It could be noted that the Amhara computerized pilot project has found it a very useful
tool during the adjudication process to have the names of the holders of the neighboring
parcels available when the results of the adjudication process are presented to the Kebele
inhabitants.
Other organizations
EMA has not been involved in cadastral survey and has therefore not introduced any PIS.
It seems that there is no agency that has the responsibility for cadastral surveying. In
many countries this is a task of the mapping agency.
CSA uses a hierarchical identifier that allows it to identify crops growing in a field (plot)
within the parcel. The CSA identifier is based on recommendations from the FAO World
Agricultural Census Programme (FAO 2000). This census programme focuses on
economical statistics and not on land registration. It uses terms that are the same but the
definitions are different.
Also the Addis Ababa Municipality uses a type of hierarchical identifier in its GIS that
appears to be similar to that of CSA.
This format is already in use in the Amhara Region in the manual system. It is a mixture
of object identifier and the holder identifier. Some documents show also the use of a
zonal code.
Parcel-id format:
Region Zone Code Wereda Kebele No of each plot the land holder
code code code has in the kebele
AA A 001 01 00001
U. Lennart Frej. Issues and Improvements in the Parcel Identification System 127
Owner id format:
If an owner moves to another Kebele, he is given a new registration number, hence this
owner identifier can not be used as a personal identifier.
Region code Zonal code Wereda code Kebele code Holding code
A A NNN NN NNNNN
Internally the system keeps track of all parcels that belong to a holding.
Parcel-id format:
This referencing system differs from the others in that it does not include the Kebele
level. It is not clear how the holdings can be kept together in a computerized
environment.
In its GIS, the Addis Ababa Administration uses a hierarchical identifier. The Title
Registration Office uses a number of different identifiers for cross referencing files and
folders.
In a national system a code for Addis Ababa city has to be added to this identifier.
Enumeration
Region Zone Wereda Kebele Area Household Holding Parcel Field
01 01 01 01 01 001 01 01 01
128 Standardization of Rural Land Registration and Cadastral Surveying Methodologies
The incorporation of the zonal code in the identifier may not be a good idea as the
boundaries of the zones are reported to be changed quite often. The effect of this would
be that the holding will change identification and all systems using the code will have to
be up-dated accordingly. If there are Weredas with the same name in a region the
problem can be addressed in various ways:
5.1 Constraints
Lack of common definitions and standards. As long as there is no national
standard terminology, various organizations within the country are likely to
define terms according to their own needs. This means that the same term can
apply to different objects depending on the tasks and duties of the organization.
There are various code tables in use by different organizations for Weredas,
Zones and Kebeles.
What:
- information is needed and by whom?
- intervals for updating and exchange?
- accuracy demands for various data items?
5.2 Opportunities
Possible to set national standards for data and establish common administrative
code tables;
The identifiers used by CSA and Addis Ababa Municipality are hierarchical and
seem to correspond fully down to parcel/holding level; hence introducing a
corresponding hierarchical structure for rural land should not be difficult;
The second level certification7 effort has not yet started in Amhara and Tigray. It
would be simple to introduce a common national identifier during this effort. In
the other regions it can be introduced from the beginning.
6. Recommendations
7
At present titling is carried out in two stages. The first stage does not include exact
measurements of the parcels.
130 Standardization of Rural Land Registration and Cadastral Surveying Methodologies
References
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University Press.
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Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). 1995. Land tenure studies 1: Cadastral surveys and
records of rights in land.
Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Rural Land Administration and Use Proclamation No.
456/2005.
International Federation of Surveyors (FIG). 1995. The FIG statement on the cadastre. Denmark:
Frederiksberg. Publication No. 11/1995.
_____. The Bathurst declaration on land administration for sustainable development. 1999.
Denmark: Frederiksberg.
_____. 2002. The Nairobi statement on spatial information for sustainable development.
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_____. 2001. Inventory of land administration systems in Europe and North America. Third
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