What does it actually take to reform land at scale?
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“Not for sale” signs are commonplace in many African cities, reflecting people’s lack of trust in the systems that record and protect land ownership. In fast-growing cities, this breakdown in land governance sits beneath almost every other development problem, housing shortages, unplanned sprawl, infrastructure gaps, and weak investment.
“I would actually be hesitant to invest in such kind of environment… because I know I would be running a risk of losing my investment.”
In this episode of Ideas in Development, we are joined by Thierry Hoza Ngoga, one of the leading implementers of Rwanda’s landmark land regularisation programme, to walk through how Rwanda registered over 10 million parcels, issued more than 7 million title deeds, and did so at a cost of roughly $6 per parcel.
What land reform actually means
Land reform is often reflexively associated with redistribution, i.e. taking land from one group and giving it to another. Thierry broadens the definition considerably. A comprehensive land reform agenda covers four areas: improving access to land (including making transactions easier); promoting productive land use (urban, agricultural, industrial); building the legal and regulatory systems that protect land rights; and establishing the institutional governance structures to administer all of this.
Security of tenure, trusted processes, a functioning legal framework, and clear institutional mandates are the preconditions for functioning urban land markets, and in many African cities, several are missing at once.
Rwanda before reform: 70% unplanned, titles for the few
Before the reforms, Kigali’s land management fell under the city mayor, who doubled as registrar of land titles. Outside Kigali, titles had to be signed by the minister responsible for land. Only a tiny fraction of parcels were titled at all, and around 70% of Kigali was considered unplanned, a level common across many African capitals.
Three pressures made reform urgent. First, Rwanda’s ambitious Vision 2020 development strategy placed land reform as a core pillar. Second, the aftermath of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi had created enormous displacement, and the potential for land-related conflict was acute. Third, Rwanda is one of Africa’s smallest and most densely populated countries, with a majority dependent on land for their livelihoods. Using that scarce resource productively was existential.
Critically, land reform was embedded in the broader economic transformation agenda rather than treated as an isolated technical programme.
“In many cases you find land reform as an isolated program on the side. It’s not part of the broader economic transformation.”
How Rwanda actually did it
The sequence was deliberate. A national land policy in 2004 set out the government’s position and ambitions. An organic land law in 2005 established the legal framework, categorising land types, defining rights, and creating institutional mandates. But policy and law alone don’t define how things work on the ground.
So the government ran extensive consultations with different land-use groups to gauge whether there was genuine public demand for reform and to understand existing informal systems of land exchange. The demand was overwhelming, so this was followed by a pilot exercise across four districts (chosen to represent the country’s diversity: urban, peri-urban, rural, and areas with larger holdings), which registered 14,000 parcels and produced the technical tools and secondary legislation needed for national rollout.
What made the programme distinctive was its community-led design. Demarcation of land boundaries and recording of ownership were carried out by locally trained people, rather than surveyors from the capital. This built trust, because people could see that no one else was deciding their land rights on their behalf. By the time demarcation and adjudication were complete, the programme had employed 1% of Rwanda’s entire population.
The approach was also deliberately affordable. The government subsidised those who couldn’t pay, and fees for everyone else were minimal. Rwanda used satellite imagery rather than expensive fixed-boundary surveys with concrete beacons, which is a major cost driver elsewhere.
The contrast with other countries is stark. Neighbouring countries attempting similar programmes have seen costs rise above $3,000 per parcel, but Rwanda achieved it for $6.
Learning by doing: What nobody anticipated
No country had done what Rwanda was attempting, in terms of scale and timeline, so there was no model to follow, or existing blueprint. Implementation surfaced many unforeseen issues. In fact, the very first parcel the team tried to demarcate belonged to a polygamous man, and since Rwanda’s constitution recognises only one legally married wife, the team immediately had to adapt.
Other challenges included cloudy satellite imagery that obscured boundaries in certain areas, and informal settlements where houses were so densely packed that physical boundaries were almost invisible. Each time, the team responded in the same way, by bringing people together, acknowledging the problem, and working out a solution on the spot.
“It was a learning by doing exercise”
More winners than losers
Any land reform creates losers, particularly those who profited from the opacity of the old system. But Thierry argues the winners in Rwanda vastly outnumbered those losers.
Amongst the winners, women have perhaps been the most significant beneficiaries. Traditionally excluded from land inheritance, they now have their names recorded on titles – and if legally married, they hold a 50% share. The national land register shows that women are now the majority of sole landowners, which is a remarkable shift.
On top of this gender dimension, orphans of the genocide now have documented rights that protect them from expropriation, foreign investors have clarity on where to go and what processes to follow, and many government institutions now use the land register as a backbone for their own sector development.
One question we had for Thierry, was what about credit markets, as per the famous Hernando de Soto thesis?
“A land title brings that certainty, that security that the lender needs, but it’s not sufficient.”
Thierry highlights that banks also want to see the borrower’s ability to repay and an active land market in case of default. In Kigali and secondary cities, many urban residents are indeed using land certificates as collateral for mortgages, but they tend to be people with formal employment. In rural areas, microfinance borrowers use certificates for small business loans.
Land reform lessons for other African countries
Rwanda’s reform, a process started in the aftermath of the genocide, was shaped by a number of unique circumstances, including it’s small and relatively homogeneous territory. So Thierry is realistic about the limits of direct replication, but emphasises that the core lessons are transferable.
Start small. Countries don’t need a national programme or even a completed legal framework to begin their land reform journey. A single municipality can pilot land recording, learn from the experience, and build evidence for scaling.
“If you start small, you perfect your model” Thierry argues. “You design it in a way that is building on the reality on the ground.”
Make it a national priority, not a side project. When land reform is treated solely as the mandate of an underfunded, understaffed land ministry, it fails. But if it is embedded in a country’s broader development strategy, with coordination across central and local government, it gains momentum and resources.
Leverage technology. Drones, improved satellite imagery, and digital registration systems have made mapping and recording far cheaper and faster than when Rwanda began decades ago.
Build trust before expecting demand. One puzzle in this space is the seemingly low demand for titles in some African cities, where officials report spending money on cadastral surveys only to find that nobody comes to collect their title. Thierry explains why a title alone is not enough.
“People will never come if they don’t trust the system in place.”
People need to see that the system issuing titles is reliable, that disputes will be resolved, and, crucially, that titling comes with broader benefits: infrastructure, services, and a genuine improvement in their lives. Without that package, a piece of paper is just seen as an invitation to pay more tax in the future.