The challenges of urban land in Freetown

In this video Dr. Victor Kabba and Dr. Alphajor Cham present the challenges of accessing land in Freetown.

Urban land in Freetown is managed by a wide range of ministries and other government actors but coordination is lacking, meaning that one ministry may authorise a development over an area protected by another ministry.

Getting access to land by applying to the government is a lengthy and complex process that takes many years. Buying land privately is very costly and risky due to the lack of land titles in Sierra Leone and thus the possibility for a landowner to sell the same piece of land multiple times. In such cases, it is difficult to recover the money through courts which are already overloaded with land cases – 60-70% of all court cases in the city according to Dr Cham.