Importance

1. Importance of Land Administration

Land is a natural resource often referred to as the "mother of all other natural resources," such as trees, soil, and minerals. It is unique in that it is fixed in quantity and non-transferable. Understanding and appreciating these characteristics of land is essential for properly valuing it and developing policies and legislation for its management and administration.

In the Gambia, land is used for food production, building houses, and other social developmental needs such as schools, health facilities, and roads. Notwithstanding the centrality of land to the Gambian people's existence, there seems to be inadequate recognition of this by policymakers, as manifested in the absence of appropriate policies, legislation, competent institutions, and other instruments of governance and management of land.

Given the Gambia's relatively small total land size of approximately 11,300 square kilometers, the need for proper land management and administration is even more critical than for other countries. Despite this, it is an open secret that the allocation and use of this unique, precious resource in the Gambia is, at best, suboptimal and, at worst, unplanned and chaotic. Agriculture and other economic development cannot take place without sustainable land administration and management.

2. Current State of Affairs

Many of the current social, economic, and developmental challenges can be linked to failures in our proper management and administration of land resources. This must therefore be addressed for any meaningful and sustainable progress to be made in meeting our socio-economic development needs that depend on land, as outlined above.

The failures in our management and administration of land resources are attributable to numerous factors, but primarily revolve around the tenure system and its administration.

a. Tenure Incoherence: While the existence of multiple tenure systems—customary, freehold, and leasehold—in the Gambia may not, in themselves, be problematic, the lack of coherence in the conceptualization of their underlying policies and coordination of their implementation over decades has resulted in many problems, as explained below. Key consequences include the erosion of social cohesion due to rampant land disputes, an overwhelmed security and judicial system, and hindrance of socio-economic development.

As the mother of all other natural resources, the insecurity of land tenure adversely affects the badly needed investment of all sorts necessary for improving the lives and wellbeing of our people. For example, investment in the agricultural sector cannot thrive without addressing issues relating to security of tenure.

b. Policy Failures: There has not been a comprehensive land policy since independence. It is worth noting that, for the first time, a draft policy was developed in 2025, but it has yet to be adopted.

c. Outdated Legislation: The existing legislation is not only obsolete but also at times contradictory, overlapping, and inconsistent.

  1. Regions Act 1946: This Act intended to preserve the customary rights of indigenes over their land resources. It states that "All Regions' lands are hereby declared to be vested in the Authorities for the Districts in which the lands are situated, and shall be held and administered for the use and common benefit, direct or indirect, of the communities concerned." The Lands Act of 1990, promulgated later, sought to create a unified tenure system in certain "designated areas." However, it ended up establishing a mechanism for taking away the customary rights conferred through the customary tenure of the Regions Act. A more consequential shortcoming of the latter is the unilateral and discretionary power it gave the Minister of Lands to establish "designated areas" anywhere in the country. The Act specifically states that "any person who holds any land in a designated area under customary law or year-to-year tenancy shall, at the date on which such area is designated and subject to the provisions of this Act, be deemed to be a lessee of such land." This is like giving with the right hand and taking with the left hand. There cannot be a greater disincentive and hindrance to investment than this.
  2. Physical Planning and Development Control Act: This Act has the intention of providing "a unified legal basis for the systematic preparation and approval of plans and control of developments (including buildings) on land and for creating a better environment and efficient utilization of land resources." Yet in practice, the exact opposite is taking place. Today, there is everything but "systematic preparation and approval of plans" or "control of development."
  3. The Land Acquisition and Compensation Act 1991: This Act provides the legal basis for government to acquire land for "public purposes" on condition that compensation be paid to the affected parties. Yet in practice, this is hardly the case. Instead, public land is being allocated to private individuals. Recent examples include the allocation of land reserved for public purposes along both sides of Bertil Harding Highway to private individuals without any transparent process.

d. Institutional Failures: The different institutions currently involved in decision-making regarding land are: households, Kabilolus, Alkalolus, Seyfos, Physical Planning, Ministry of Lands, District Tribunals, Magistrate Courts, and the Supreme Court. Individuals in this list derive their rights to tenure or powers from different legislation, which, as shown above, has numerous defects. The result is the existence of vaguely defined and delineated institutional mandates and arrangements. Consequently, the actions and activities of these institutions are neither coordinated nor guided by rules and regulations. This results in titles being transferred without either a serial number or georeference to a specific location, multiple titles being assigned to the same land, lack of confidence in land adjudication authorities, suboptimal collection of rates and taxes, and low investment due to the above-listed issues.

current state

 

e. Unclear Demarcation of Authority: There is no clear delineation of institutional jurisdictions, and in most instances, no physical demarcation between state-owned land, customary land, leasehold, and freehold lands. In reality, land changes from customary tenure to leasehold tenure when one acquires customary land and then chooses to lease the land from the State.

f. Absence of Capacity: At the bottom of the land allocation and documentation ladder are the Alkalos, some of whom unfortunately cannot read or write, and most of whom do not have any proper record-keeping system. Then there are other institutions such as Physical Planning, which inherits all defects in the title from Alkalos and imprints additional defects. This results in poor urban development planning, no master plans for road networks, absence of public spaces, lack of land use planning or zoning, and non-standardization of land uses. Furthermore, the District Chiefs do not have the capacity, including resources, to properly confirm and document titles or adjudicate conflicts, which is one of their mandates. The security forces, who find it difficult to understand the tenure system, are equally challenged in enforcing decisions on land from the judiciary. These issues result in low confidence in the entire system.

3. PPA’s Solutions

a. Policy Reforms: The 2025 policy currently under development will, if adopted, be reviewed but, more importantly, popularized to achieve buy-in from the population. This is notwithstanding the fact that the document underwent thorough consultation during its formulation. Specific key policy reforms will include coordination between decision-makers and harmonization of the numerous customary, freehold, and leasehold tenure systems.

b. Legislative Changes: The amendment and alignment of various obsolete legislation, such as the State Lands Act, Land Acquisition and Compensation Act 1991, and Physical Planning Act, will be initiated immediately. A high-level unified legislative framework will be formulated. A coherent set of legislation will be defined that clearly delineates the roles of the tenure systems and institutions. In particular, an enhanced land adjudication system will be defined.

c. Land Tenure: Harmonize the tenure system by ensuring that title documentation goes hand-in-hand with the official registration and cadastral system. This means Physical Planning must be involved in the critical first step of title transfer. This includes streamlining and improving coordination and strengthening local administrative and governance structures.

d. Increasing Capacity: Building and developing human resources capable of implementing policies and legislation at all levels of all institutions involved in the management and administration of land. This should include capacitating law enforcement to ensure that decisions of adjudicating authorities are enforced.

e. Innovation: Deployment of modern technology in the development of land cadastral systems and regulatory activities such as monitoring. Through this, visibility of the process can be created throughout the structures from the onset of title transfer. Furthermore, it would be used in planning and zoning for different land uses, such as agricultural, reserves, cultural, settlement, and other uses. This should result in the total registration of all lands in the country.

f. Standardization: Standardization of land parcels for different uses. Given that land, as defined above, is a fixed natural resource in size, it is an intergenerational resource. As such, today's generation has as much right to it as future generations. Therefore, optimal use must be made through, among other measures, standardization.

solutions

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