Land information management and landed property ownership security: Evidence from state-sponsored court system

• The relationship between land registration and ownership security is investigated.
• The investigation focuses on the perspective of State-sponsored court system.
• Owners of registered landed property can lose their property in civil litigation.
• Land registration per se is incapable of guaranteeing ownership security.
• A potent tool that can guarantee ownership security is defined.

It is commonly argued that land information management via land registration guarantees landed property ownership security in the developing world. This has, therefore, triggered various studies into the relation between land registration and ownership security. The findings from these studies are divergent. Whilst some studies claim that it is land registration that guarantees ownership security, others have established no discernible link between registration and ownership security. This groundbreaking study contributes to the debate by investigating the nexus between land registration and ownership security from a new dimension. It focuses on the perspective of the State-sponsored court system on ownership security. Data from a High Court in one of the cities in Ghana covering a period of 10 years was extracted and analyzed. The evidence adduced shows that land registration per se is incapable of guaranteeing security as landed property ownership can be contested whether or not it is registered and owners of registered landed property can lose their ownership via civil litigation in the State-sponsored court system – cases are not automatically decided in favour of owners of registered landed property when disputes are brought before the courts for resolution. Thus, the argument that land registration guarantees ownership security is unsustainable - land registration is made to serve the wrong purpose. The paper, therefore, defines the right and critical role of land registration. It is concluded that land title or ownership insurance, albeit may appear to be expensive, is a tool that can potently address the problem of landed ownership insecurity. The findings provide useful lessons for international donor organisations like the World Bank and United Nations that are supporting land registration programmes as a panacea to the problem of ownership insecurity in the developing world.