VARIACIÓN MEDIA DE LA LONGITUD CEFALOTORÁCICA

This section presents a typology of land administration challenges faced by developing countries in their efforts to recognize, map and document informal settlements and customary land. Furthermore, it highlights challenges encountered by the five countries investigated in establishing participatory initiatives aimed at improving the administration of tribal land to improve the security of tenure and welfare of citizens, especially the poor and underprivileged. These challenges are as follows:

1. Despite comprising the large proportion of land in the countries investigated (except South Africa), customary land is the most undocumented, yet inhabited by a large population. A lack of documentation exposes residents to social ills including poverty, discrimination, crime, homelessness and insecurity of tenure.

2. A lack of adaptation of social and customary tenure arrangements by colonial systems, led to many land conflicts, while land reforms established to address these challenges failed to provide the anticipated security of tenure for citizens in the countries investigated.

3. The failure of land reforms in countries like Uganda and Kenya have been attributed to the lack of consultations and engagement of local communities for buy-in, informed decision making and understanding of social tenures on the ground.

4. The reservation of prime agricultural land to European settlers, elites and leaders, while leaving infertile and unproductive fields to local farmers has contributed immensely to poor agricultural production and subsequent poverty, as seen in most developing countries, like Kenya and Botswana.

5. Despite conventional LAS being developed with sound intentions, limited capacities and insufficient infrastructures at national and municipal levels can lead to their subsequent failure, as evidenced with TLIMS in Botswana.

6. A lack of scope and unclear definition of functions in a LAS can lead to a loss of confidence by the public on the ability of the government to protect their land rights. As a result, residents resort to illegal activities like the use of land guards in Ghana to protect their land rights or the increase in informal settlements as in Kenya.

7. The long and costly processes of registering land in developing countries are a major hindrance for citizens to secure their tenure through registering their land.

8. Complex and highly centralized, bureaucratic LAS, excessive delays and injustices provide opportunities for malpractices and corruption.

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9. Reliance on paper-based systems due to the failures of complex computerized systems can lead to duplication of efforts, lack of data integration, multiple allocations, and inefficiencies in LAS as evidenced in Botswana.

10. The weak legal and regulatory institutions associated with communal land, like the multiple arbitration authority levels in South Africa can cause problems for land adjudications and escalate conflicts when resolutions cannot be achieved within a sufficient amount of time.

11. Even though many developing countries have decentralized their LA activities, Cousins (2009) argues that this is inefficient on its own, since it does not resolve the issue of authority and representation at the community level.

12. Consensus-based decision making is common in community mapping initiatives. However, it suffers from a lack of accountability, which can affect community development and incite disputes when citizens cannot have a general agreement. 13. Community mapping can bring out latent conflicts (De Gessa, 2008), hence sufficient

dispute mediation measures are necessary for all stages of planning, execution and implementation.

14. The high cost of surveying communal land is prohibitive and its effectiveness as a basis for functional decentralized LAS for the capital-poor residents remains debatable (Rugege, 2005). Therefore, affordable techniques for delineating and measuring land parcel boundaries for land administration and registration purposes are a necessity for developing countries.

This section presented a review of LAS of five countries in Sub Saharan Africa, which provided an understanding of their land reforms and how they continue to influence current procedures of administering land to secure tenure for citizens. For example, legal systems put in place by colonial powers have not sufficiently accommodated and adapted indigenous norms, resulting in the side-lining of customary land despite its vastness and the larger population it supports. Thus, customary land is characterised by poverty, insufficient documentation, conflicts and insecurity of tenure.

To address these challenges, developing countries like Uganda and Kenya established participatory mapping initiatives that recognize social tenures and customary land to improve the security of tenure for citizens, particularly in rural areas. Successes of these initiatives have been attributed to the policies implemented by the countries to recognize the importance of

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public participation in documenting informal and customary land rights. In contrast, the lack of policies that guide public participation in land activities in Botswana and South Africa make it difficult for local communities to actively participate in land administration activities of their area.

Participatory initiatives should be viewed as grass-roots activities that aim to empower local communities for better land access and tenure security. The shortcomings and issues affecting LAS in the countries investigated provided an understanding of efforts made by the countries to recognize, map and document informal and customary land to improve the security of tenure of residents, particularly in rural areas. All the investigated countries recognise the importance of active public participation in land related matters, as a means of facilitating good land governance, transparency and accountability. For example, Ghana, Uganda and Kenya have implemented policies that facilitate it, while other countries like Botswana and South Africa are in the process of formulating them. The following section investigates the cadastral system of Botswana in depth as the case study for this research to understand its legal, institutional, policy, and technical frameworks for handling geospatial data which is a major component of a functional LAS.