Slum Dwellers International (SDI) Land Information Management
This entry has been selected as a finalist in the
Property Rights: Identity, Dignity & Opportunity for All competition.
Our project seeks to leverage the expansive connection of a continental network of economically disadvantaged communities to attain their desire to formalize property ownership through the widespread usage of an affordable and approachable land information management system adopting the Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM) and utilizing Geographic Information System (GIS).
About You
Section 1: About You
Section 2: About Your Organization
Is your initiative connected to an established organization?
Organization Name
Slum Dwellers International
Organization Website
Organization Phone
(+254) 20 565 752
Organization Address
Organization Country
Ghana, GA
How long has this organization been operating?
More than 5 years
Is your organization a
Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
Your idea
Name your project.
Slum Dwellers International (SDI) Land Information Management
Describe Your Idea
Our project seeks to leverage the expansive connection of a continental network of economically disadvantaged communities to attain their desire to formalize property ownership through the widespread usage of an affordable and approachable land information management system adopting the Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM) and utilizing Geographic Information System (GIS).
Country your work focuses on
Ghana, GA
Innovation
What makes your idea unique?
Current methods of registering property through formal government processes are often too expensive, complicated and time consuming for many. Furthermore, processes tend to be geared toward the wealthy elite that can hire professionals to navigate a cumbersome, bureaucratic and inefficient registration process. As a result, urban and rural poor and those operating under customary tenure arrangements are often excluded from the formal system. Implementation of a single approach for collection and documentation of property rights, consistent with the UN Habitat and International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) initiated Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM) will allow Slum Dwellers International (SDI) affiliates to collect, document and leverage property rights collected in a consistent and scalable manner. The STDM is based in the pending International Standards Organization (ISO) certified Land Information Domain Model (LADM).
SDI works directly in the field with slum/shack dwellers in order to document property rights as they truly exist and are recognized by the local community. In gaining local recognition of property rights during the first step of documentation, the difficult transition from informal to formal land tenure recognition is eased.
SDI proposes to implement ILS OpenTitle, an off the shelf land information management system, to affiliates throughout Africa to resolve disjointed efforts to document property rights. In training SDI staff in a single, replicable approach, there will be consistency in data collection techniques and management of documentary and spatial data - key to ensuring the integrity of land information across SDI affiliates, in a sustainable and cost effective manner.
Do you have a patent for this idea?
Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
Tell us about the social impact of your innovation. Please include both numbers and stories as evidence of this impact
Slum/Shack Dwellers International is currently active in 10 countries, and serves an estimated 2500 households per year. SDI is attempting to address land tenure as it is of growing concern, especially because it is most often the poor who are lacking tenure security of any sort. They have identified the technological and administrative needs for documenting property rights, and are currently working to implement a best practice method across all their organizations in Africa. Their proven efforts have shown that securing property rights allows citizens to improve their social circumstances in leveraging their recognized ownership of land to access credit.
Problem
Informal settlements and those based on customary land rights currently lack property documentation. Existing systems for managing property information in these areas are often prone to fraud, manipulation, and natural disaster, are paper-based and poorly maintained, and in some cases systems do not even exist. Because citizens in these marginalized communities are generally unable to access the government’s land registries due either to high cost, distance, lengthy and convoluted procedures, or a general fear of taxation, it becomes an important factor that SDI as a nongovernmental organization is trusted by these communities to work on their behalf. SDI uses technologies and cost effective procedures to proactively document land rights in the field by personally visiting citizens at their place of work or residence to collect all pertinent information.
Actions
SDI has currently trained staff members of SDI affiliates in Liberia, Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Kenya and Uganda in data collection techniques as well as the use of appropriate land information systems and the management of property information. SDI has identified a standard methodology and data collection template— ILS OpenTitle to serve as the starting point for each data collection and subsequent documentation of information regarding persons, property and land rights. We have accounted for the fact that each district has peculiarities and different system inefficiencies in the data collection process, and are looking forward to expanding the training of SDI affiliates in order to harmonize a Land Information System that can be used across the SDI network.
Results
SDI works to find permanent solutions to urban poverty through the improvement of settlements and shelter conditions. Their goal then is to create tenure situations that work for communities without subjecting them to increased market forces. Poor people in India, Brazil, South Africa and Kenya have been instrumental in designing communal tenure arrangements that ensure that current residents actually benefit from increased security, and can set about building houses little by little. SDI seeks to replicate this success elsewhere, and we are confident better documentary and spatial data managed efficiently will allow us to do so.
How many people will your project serve annually?
1001‐10,000
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
Less than $50
Does your project seek to have an impact on public policy?
Yes
If so, how?
A common argument by governments that do not acknowledge the benefits of documenting all of their citizens’ property is that the process of documenting property rights is overly expensive and time consuming, particularly for those living in dense slums with varying degrees of legal tenure.
Through the utilization of existing networks, relationships and staff, SDI quells this argument by offering a greater degree of efficiency in the collection and cost of property information documentation and can reach places that have previously been neglected. SDI affiliates already works in these communities and are trusted by local inhabitants – unlike the case with government who are often feared by citizens who expect to either be taxed or evicted.
The impoverished populations living in slums and squatter settlements are often left disenfranchised and without political voice, resulting in a general lack of respect for their human rights. This disrespect is often revealed through the lack of inclusion of inhabitants in the decision making process of government, and in extreme cases, the demolition and bulldozing of their homes so that land can be put to other use. Formally documenting the land rights of the poor not only accounts for a greater recognition by the government for the human rights of its citizens, but also a greater voice to the poor to be more civically and politically invested and outspoken.
Sustainability
What stage is your project in?
Operating for less than a year
Does your organization have a board of directors or an advisory board?
Yes
Does your organization have any non monetary partnerships with NGOs?
Yes
Does your organization have any non monetary partnerships with businesses?
Yes
Does your organization have any non monetary partnerships with government?
Yes
Please tell us more about how partnerships could be critical to the success of your innovation.
In combining the public and private sectors on this project, property documentation becomes communal and the formalization, efficient. This partnership ensures an adoption of more streamlined tenure formalization and the assurance that tenure will be recognized and undisputed by all. Enumeration and documentation of right (which includes GIS mapping of slum settlements) is a participatory research tool designed to enable the federations to develop detailed information about their communities, which can then be used to broker deals with formal institutions.
We would like to learn more about how your initiative is financially supported. Please explain your business plan/revenue model
The software will cost roughly $1000 USD for each of the ten affiliates, with training for one week in data collection for spatial, photographic and documentary evidence as well as in the use of a land information and document information management system.
As a non profit organization, SDI will not bill clients for this activity.
Our business plan is being finalized currently.
The Story
What was the defining moment that led you to this innovation?
Over the course of the past two to three years, SDI has begun to document property rights in the slum and squatter settlements in which we are active in Nairobi. In working with SDI affiliates throughout Africa, there has been a growing realization that land tenure is of importance to us all, and that most of the affiliates are beginning initiatives to collect information pertaining to property rights. While methods for documenting rights and collection spatial data may vary, many of the steps are similar
In reviewing the various processes for data collection and data management it has become apparent that we are spending time and money developing approaches unique to each affiliate. We’ve realized that developing a replicable approach in line with international standards will result in cost savings for SDI affiliates, as well as ensuring that processes for documenting land rights are consistent with international best practices and that our documentation of customary and community recognized right could eventually be incorporated into a formal system. Through working with international organizations working on property rights, such as International Land Systems (ILS), Inc we have developed an approach for collecting, documenting and recording information in line with the Social Tenure Domain Model
Due to this consistent and replicable approach, in time, certified property records or documents issued by SDI affiliates attesting to property rights that we feel are recognized locally, will begin to have a value of their own. It is been our experience that in many emerging economies, properties with formal title are of greater monetary value then properties lacking any documentation – that there is in effect a “premium” for property with secure rights. We are working to have SDI’s property documentation be recognized as having some value, and being some proof of property rights in the absence of formal title.
Tell us about the social innovator—the person—behind this idea.
Jack Makau is the Research and Documentation Coordinator and has been working for SDI on initiatives to document various methodologies and approach across the SDI network. Recognizing the growing importance of land tenure, Mr. Makau begin to look at how geographic information systems and document management systems might be used to manage information concerning those SDI works to assist in slum communities. Through research into GIS and testing of various systems and methodologies for data collection, SDI began field testing ILS OpenTitle and recognized the system as having the ideal blend of functionality relating to the management of spatial and documentary evidence.
Mr. Makau is based in Nairobi, Kenya, but works with SDI affiliates across the world.
SDI is an international network of slum dweller movements and civil society support agencies in 34 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. SDI's mission is to link poor urban communities from cities across the South to transfer and adapt the successful mobilization, advocacy, and problem solving strategies they develop in
one location to other cities, countries and regions. Since SDI is focused on the local needs of slum dwellers, it has developed the traction to advance the common agenda of creating “pro-poor” cities that integrate rather than marginalize the interests of slum dwellers and counter the dominant urban development approaches that are in turn backed and financed by global agencies such as the World Bank, the IMF and the UN.
How did you first hear about Changemakers?
Through another organization or company
If through another source, please provide the information.
We heard about his competition through our personal contacts at the Omyidar Network.
Additional
Which (if any) of the following strategies apply to your organization or company (check as many as apply)
Policy advocacy to strengthen property rights or increase security of tenure.
Please explain how your work furthers one or many of the above strategies (if you selected “other”, please explain your strategy)
Through the use of ILS OpenTitle, users can compile property data by adding and editing information regarding persons, properties, and rights and generating property reports that allow for for the true and confident development of property to occur through the formalization process.
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| Ghanian_Field_Training.JPG | 32.22 KB |
 | 111 weeks ago Matt Guttentag said: On February 2, 2011, the judges reviewed entries for the Changemakers Property Rights: Identity, Dignity, and Opportunity for All ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 133 weeks ago Jack Makau updated this Competition Entry. |
| 133 weeks ago Jack Makau updated this Competition Entry. |
| 133 weeks ago Jack Makau submitted this idea. |
