Land Administration and Land Management

Efficient and effective land management is very much dependent on land administration. Land administration supports land management decision-making because it involves processes in determining, recording and disseminating information about the tenure, value, use of land and land taxation systems when implementing land management policies. It includes land registration, cadastral surveying and mapping, fiscal, legal and multi-purpose cadastres and parcel based land information systems. Land administration is intertwined also with the broad prospects of land management like land ownership and transfer, land titling and registration, land sub-division.
Land administration system should provide the infrastructure to manage land covering a whole range of activities which include land use allocation, land conversion or reclassification, land acquisition (land assembly or consolidation, land banking, land swapping), land disposition (sales patent, homestead patent, free patent, voluntary confirmation, compulsory confirmation), land development and its regulation, and conservation of lands. Until recent times the primary aim of land administration was seen as the provision of secure title to land. Insecure property rights inhibit investment and hence good land use. They also hinder good governance and the creation of an involved and committed society. Without effective access to secure property rights, national economies cannot progress and sustainable development cannot be achieved. . The land administration infrastructure in our country will be critical to the implementation of any sustainable development or land/environmental management policy. If land records in our country are computerized, a critical mass of data will already be converted into digital form and we are now in a position to analyze this data and monitor trends in the land market. It will now be possible to compile even very general statistics for management information.

If you have a good land administration system, it automatically improves the land management system. An efficient land administration system has a land information system that serves as the basis for decision-making for efficient management of our valuable and limited land resources. In the case of local municipalities, the complete knowledge of what land is referred to and who owns that land, would give them an accurate base of information on which to implement its municipal governance functions relating to land use management, valuation, development control etc.