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The paper presents a global model for understanding land administration systems in support of sustainable development. The evolution of these systems is presented as a response to the dynamic relation between humankind and land. The Nordic evolution is described with a focus that any land administration system is embedded in the cultural and judicial setting of the individual country/jurisdiction. The issue of spatial information infrastructures is recognised as an increasingly important component for achieving sustainable development in developed as well as developing countries. The paper discusses the conceptual, political and economic mechanisms, and examples are given with regard to the Danish conceptual approach in this area. Finally, the paper deals with the issue of decentralisation and the impact of central vs local government in land management in support of sustainable development. It is argued that competencies should rest with the lowest possible level of jurisdiction so as to combine responsibility for decision making with accountability for financial and environmental consequences.

The purpose of this paper is to examine expropriation, valuation, compensation and rehabilitation practices and their impacts on expropriated households.

This study employed a mixed research approach. The target populations of the study were expropriated households in Debre Markos City from 2019 to 2022. The study uses purposive and systematic random sampling techniques. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, narration and thematic clustering.

The findings of this study revealed that the expropriation process was not participatory and the right holders were not treated as what is expected. It is further found that economic losses, moral damage and social disturbance payments were not considered in the compensation package. The displacement compensation given was also inadequate and sometimes delayed and the time value of money was not taken into account for delayed payments. This creates social and economic problems. The rehabilitation and resettlement program was inadequate and ineffective. The expropriation, valuation, compensation and rehabilitation practice in general lack transparency and accountability.

To ensure efficient and effective expropriation, valuation and compensation, there should be a well-organized government system that provides an accurate valuation on the one hand and restores the livelihood of the displaced on the other.

This paper is the first on expropriation, valuation, compensation and rehabilitation within the framework of transparency, accountability, effective rehabilitation and resettlement and institutional arrangements to ensure the sustainable livelihoods of affected households.

This paper aims to examine current land administration practices (LA) in Tanzania to pinpoint divergences and convergences from past experiences that necessitated the 1990s reforms.

Literature review was carried out to understand historical practices which were then matched with current regulatory framework and observable LA practices captured through in-depth individual and group interviews of LA professionals in the public and private sectors, as well as LA customers in Dodoma Region Tanzania.

The current practices and government’s responses through land law reforms is largely a replica of what happened in the pre- and post-independence eras until just before the 1990s reform and is still characterised by corruption, inefficiency in service delivery and poor coordination among LA actors. It introduces superficial land governance structure over customary land as it was during colonialism; induces a temporary hikes in title delivery without any sustainability prospects just as it was immediately after independence; and induces more uncertainties for local land holders/investors than it addresses as it was during the implementation of the 1982 agricultural policy. Furthermore, the current awareness education during rural land titling programmes is inadequate to address the perceived risk of land alienation and dispossession among the poor.

A uniform LA system and tenure type throughout Tanzania that cater for the need of the time rather than a fragmented system of LA, which fuels maladministration and inefficiency in LA, is dearly needed.

Convergence of current LA practices with some of the worst past experiences explains some failures in land policy reform in Tanzania and the developing world in general.

Against the backdrop of European eGovernment (eGov) and new public management strategies, public sector mergers are the ultimate transformation after collaboration and integration. The land administration domain is useful to evaluate how and why mergers occur or not. The domain usually comprises two types of organizations, cadastres and land registries. There are both national and international calls to merge these two types, yet some countries have opted to merge these, while others persist in maintaining two separate ones. How and why this occurs is the key question.

This study applies a mixed-methods approach of data collection and a co-evolutionary perspective on organizational changes. Agencies change alongside perceptions of staff members and external stimuli of policies. These are exposed through narrated personal vignettes and international benchmarking surveys of land agencies.

Decisions on mergers are primarily embedded in local organizational cultures, and follow non-linear paths and are historically path-dependent. Internal staff members tend to disfavour mergers. Contrastingly, external stimuli such as the benchmark surveys act as national and international stimuli which favour mergers. The common narrative of both perspectives is an increased relevance of “simplicity”, which does not however have an effect on merger decisions.

The land administration domain is perhaps idiosyncratic. It has a long history with discussions on merging collaborating organizations. Still, other domains affected by eGov strategies have so far only focused on operational interoperability and database integration, and less on the potential for institutional or organizational mergers. Therefore, experiences from land administration will be useful in the future.

During the formulation of new eGov projects which foster further collaboration and integration in the public sector, it is necessary to take the merger experiences of land agencies into account. It is especially necessary to be aware of implicit norms which are fostered by positive feedback loops of social networks during mergers, which may influence discretionary decisions. In addition, international benchmarks and ranking need to reconsider their benchmarking criteria which currently only focus on efficiency measures.

Mergers may not be a next logical step when collaborating and integrating. Instead, mergers need to be rooted in personal long-standing collaboration practices. Furthermore, individual staff members may only be willing to engage in the operational aspects of mergers if it significantly makes their own tasks simpler and the quality of their work better appreciated by external customers.

This paper was written after the drafting of the National Land Policy was completed. The purpose of the paper is to give suggestions on the implementation of the policy. The National Land Policy reform process began in 2002 and is made up of several thematic areas. Under each category, identification of the major constraints is outlined in the paper together with possible gaps in the existing framework and a way forward is suggested to overcome them. One of the underlying gaps in all the thematic areas is the lack of adequate and competent capacity to undertake the necessary reforms to achieve the envisaged tangible changes in the land reform process in the country.

This paper describes a comprehensive outline of the training needs and capacity building in land management required at both tertiary and university levels. It includes continuing professional development and practice of various cadres of personnel in both the public and private sector. The paper concludes by highlighting the need to undertake measures to align the various basic training, specialisations and skill‐enhancement curricula and syllabi in land management and administration disciplines at both the tertiary and university level.

The paper is developed from review of literature as part of research methodology and there are no empirical findings presented in the contents. The paper identifies that there is lack of adequate and competent capacity to undertake the necessary reforms is suggested by the National Land Policy. The paper highlights the measures that can be undertaken to align the various basic training applications to be able to implement the policy.

The paper is a source of information for the working group charged with creating institutions and preparing a training syllabi for those who are employed by the new institutions.

The aim of this paper is to examine the expropriation, valuation and compensation practice. This paper tries to investigate how the expropriation and compensation laws are implemented when privately held land and attached real properties are taken for public purpose development in Bahir Dar city and surrounding. However, further research should be undertaken nation‐wide to explore the problems throughout the country.

The paper reports the findings of a survey of expropriatees from main practices throughout Bahir Dar city and its surroundings.

There is a big gap between the actual practice of expropriation, valuation and compensation and the Laws. Lack of application of standardized methods and procedures created situations of unfair valuation and compensation.

The practical implication is that the living status of affected people before and after expropriation could be useful.

The value of the paper for government officials, real property valuers and investors is that transparency, consistency and fair compensation are useful.

Describes the recent economic and land reforms in China, and the consequent changes in the emerging Chinese property market. Analyses the need for property management valuation skills in China in the light of problems of country size, regional differences, the scale of economic reforms and the speed with which they are being implemented, administration and the difficulty of educating a large number of property professionals.

The land sector in Ghana, particularly skin lands acquisition and title registration are fraught with several issues including unreliable record-keeping systems and land encroachments. The paper explores the potential of blockchain application in skin lands acquisition and title registration in Ghana with the aim of developing a blockchain-enabled framework for land acquisition. The purpose of this paper is to use the framework as a tool towards solving some of the loopholes in the process that leads to numerous issues bedeviling the current system.

The paper adopts a systematic literature review approach fused with informal discussions with key informants and leverages on the researchers’ own experiences to conceptualize blockchain application in skin lands acquisition in Ghana.

Problems bedeviling skin lands acquisition and title registration emanated from the issuance of allocation notes, payment of kola money and use of a physical ledger to document land transactions. As a result, the developed framework was designed to respond to these issues and deal with the problems. As the proposed blockchain framework would be a public register, it was argued that information on all transactions on a specific parcel of land could be available to the public in real-time. This enhances transparency and possibly resolves the issue of encroachments and indeterminate land boundaries because stakeholders can determine rightful owners of land parcels before initiating transactions.

Practically, blockchain technology has the potential to deal with the numerous issues affecting the smooth operation of skin lands acquisition and title registration in Ghana. Once the enumerated issues are resolved, there will be certainty of title to and ownership of land and property to drive investments because lenders could more easily ascertain owners of land parcels that could be used as collateral for securing loans. Similarly, property developers and land purchasers could easily identify rightful owners for land transactions. The government would be able to identify owners for land and property taxation.

This paper contributes to the literature on blockchain and application to land acquisition and title registration with a focus on a specific customary land ownership system.

Spatially enabled taxation systems provide public policy makers in Australia with a conundrum. For the Valuers General who provide the fiscal cadastre for the taxation system, spatial enablement could lead to a central role in State Government taxation or to a sidelined role. This paper aims to address this issue.

The paper uses a survey of Valuers General.

The paper establishes the current extent of adoption of spatially enabled taxation systems, identifies current provision and uses of valuation data and explores possible future provision and uses of such data.

The sample size for survey may limit its use elsewhere.

The paper concludes that further integration and a unified national policy approach would be preferable.

The first published paper to establish the current extent of adoption of spatially enabled taxation systems and to identify current provision and uses of valuation data in Australasia.

Within the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe, radical and far‐reaching programmes of reform are taking place. Central to these are the processes of privatisation and decentralisation which require the newly‐created tiers of local government to develop their own sources of locally‐based revenue. The property tax represents what is, from an international perspective, the most important, stable source of revenue for local government. The majority of the new emerging democracies have introduced or are in the process of introducing ad valorem‐based property taxes. This paper begins by focusing on those key elements which are central to the successful implementation of such systems and then gives a brief summary of developments in two transitional countries, namely, Armenia and the Czech Republic.