SADA Land Trust to be established

Collaborative efforts are on-going to establish a Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) Land Trust through a land pooling system.

This would arise out of mutual collaboration between traditional landowners and SADA which would develop the competence to manage such lands, Alhaji Bakari Sadiq Nyari, National Chairman of the Lands Commission, has said.

The land pooling system would enable SADA to make available varieties of land forms to developers, to make informed choices and to negotiate effectively.

Alhaji Nyari made this known at SADA’s stakeholder co-ordinating committee meeting held in Wa to update them on activities and key issues, and the new ways of working.

He explained that under the land pooling system, landowners and managers of various categories of lands would voluntarily place their clearly defined lands into the pool.

He said SADA would undertake due diligence on investors, as well as landowners, in order to create an effective match from both ends.

SADA would monitor usage and ensure compliance with land and other laws of the state, and prepare profiles of each parcel of land available for investment.

Alhaji Nyari said persons subscribing their lands into the pool would sign protocols committing themselves to make those lands available in the pool over a predictable period, so that the managers of the trust could have certainty on what lands they had available at any point in time.

Landowners under the trust would have to give notice to the managers of an agreed period when the lands would be withdrawn, because of completed negotiations with an investor, he said.

Alhaji Nyari gave the assurance that state land sector agencies were committed to fast tracking all cases from the trust, to ensure the elimination of frustrations during documentation.

He said partnership between owners of land, consensus on goals for development and creating goodwill with investors and SADA, was the rationale behind the establishment of the Land Trust project.

Under the project, SADA would be expected to provide platform for hosting the land pooling exercise, provide information to support both the acquisition and registration of the lands to the investors, the landowners and the government land sector agencies.

SADA would also provide a platform for negotiations with the appropriate guidelines through research and background checks on investors and landowners.

Mr. Charles Abugre, SADA’s Chief Executive Officer, said SADA with support from the World Bank and the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovations, engaged the services of the Town and Country Planning Department in 2014, to develop a spatial development framework for the SADA area.

This followed initial support by the World Bank to SADA, under the Sustainable Land and Water Management Project which aimed to develop a watershed master plan for the SADA area.