Kenya to Put Real Estate on the Blockchain

Since the advent of blockchain, there has been a variety of emerging business aiming to utilize this avant-garde technology to better their business models. Among those is the real estate market in Kenya – a complicated business where corruption runs rampant because of the lack of clarity and transparency.

Blockchain to Prove Ownership of Property

Situated in the mid-East part of the African continent, Kenya is also known as the “Silicon Savannah” due to its thriving technological advancements as seen from the emergence of tech hubs such as the LakeHub and the SwahiliBox. However, despite being the cradle of innovation, there is still one problem that the East African nation has yet to be able to solve – the processing of land ownership titles.

Thanks to the pernicious corruption throughout the bureaucracy, “double ownership” disputes when it comes to land titles have become very common in Kenya. This is because government officials can be bribed to alter land ownership documents in a process more commonly known as land grabbing.

To battle this pervasive issue, Kenyan Minister of Information, Joseph Mucheru will be putting together a group of specialists to figure out how blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) technology can be used to put a stop to land grabbing. According to Mucheru, he believes that the incorporation of blockchain will provide “security, efficiency, and transparency” to the land registry system in Kenya.

In an interview with the BBC, the leader of the aforementioned group of specialist, Bitangee Ndemo promised that the use of blockchain is a promising prospect for the African nation.

“We missed the internet wave, caught up with mobile technology… blockchain is the next wave – and we must be part of it,”

Blockchain Application Other African Nations

Kenya is not the only African nation to introduce blockchain technology to the infrastructure of their governing body. Another prominent example is Bitland, a Ghana-based organization that aims to “streamline and automate the entire land registration process” by incorporating blockchain technology to provide a better system of record for its citizens.

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Below is an excerpt from the official Bitland website:

“Bitland is an organization that aims to provide services to allow individuals and organizations to survey land and record deeds onto the Bitshares Blockchain. As the pilot project is working out of Kumasi, Ghana the team is looking to expand their reach further into the African continent. As the organization grows, they look to build infrastructure in developing countries to potentially unlock billions of dollars in untapped property rights.”