Land Institutions to Address New Challenges in Africa : Implications for the World Bank's Land Policy

Although land and associated property is a key part of national wealth and protecting rights to them is a key function of the state, Africa's formal land institutions often still operate on regulations that barely changed since colonial times, undermining public trust and leading to high levels of informality that make it difficult to underpin vibrant urban land and financial markets and control corruption, remove impediments to structural transformation posed by rural factor market imperfections to empower women, improve equity, and ensure sustainable management of public land. If an appropriate regulatory framework is in place, digital technology provides opportunities for African countries to broaden the range of rights that can be legally recognized, expand the type of contracts involving such rights that private parties and reduce associated enforcement costs, and provide local and global public goods. Institutions such as the World Bank can create momentum for reform through globally comparable monitoring and help harness these opportunities by focusing interventions on providing analytical support to establish the policy and institutional environment to (i) document and enforce rights at scale; (ii) regulate land markets to ensure competition and deliver public goods including price information, land use planning to coordinate investment and avoid externalities, and tax land value gains to support local public services; and (iii) reduce the transaction cost for private parties to enter and enforce contracts involving immovable property and the uses to which it is put