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MiDA and Ministry of Lands and
Forestry sign implementing agreement
Accra, Dec. 18, Ghanadot/GNA - 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.
GNA
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