MiDA and Ministry of Lands and Forestry sign implementing agreement

The Millennium Development Authority (MiDA), which is responsible for implementing and managing the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) Ghana Programme, and the Ministry of Lands, Forestry and Mines on Tuesday signed a 6.25 million-dollar implementing entity agreement to facilitate registration of land rights in rural communities and enhance farmers' access to land.

The Systematic Registration of Rural Land Rights will help identify existing land holdings in the pilot registration districts, place them in Title Registers and thereafter issue land title certificates to all proprietors in the districts.

The agreement seeks to address such problems of indeterminate boundaries of private and other land holdings, conflicting records of land rights and an underdeveloped land registration system with the view to making access to land more efficient and secure while preserving secure tenure for local communities.

Mr. Martin Eson-Benjamin, CEO of MiDA and Mrs. Esther Obeng-Dappah, Minister of Land and Forestry, initialled the agreement.

“It is our hope that these interventions will place participating farmers in a good position to obtain needed credit,” Mr Eson-Benjamin said.

Part of the money would be used to purchase and install continuous operating receiver systems, Global Positioning Systems and total stations to enable MiDA to digitally map out farm parcels.

To further promote the activities, Mr. Eson-Benjamin said the Authority was assisting the Land Title Registry to secure resources and furnish an office in the Pilot Registration Districts to enable prospective proprietors to be placed in the Land Title Register and for Land Title Certificates to be issued to them within the pilot district.

Mrs Obeng-Dappah said the agreement would help advance land administration in a well coordinated manner.

She said the Ministry had already begun a process to cover the entire country with Geodetic Reference Networks and expressed the hope that the GPS would help complement government efforts.

The 547-million dollar MCA Ghana compact was signed between the Ghanaian government and its US counterpart and aims to accelerate the pace of the processes towards enhanced economic growth and poverty reduction.

These processes are to be led by agricultural transformation activities in 23 pilot districts.