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Land administration in Sierra Leone is a complex issue. The current process of registration in Freetown is ineffective and disorganized, leading to a widening gap in the credibility of both the cadaster and registry. Surveying quality is inadequate due to lack of trained surveyors in modern electronic surveying and mapping techniques, and a shortage of equipment. Most of the confusion and contradictions dominating the typology of land issues in the provinces emanates from the general absence of well-established cadastral boundaries. The new national lands policy of Sierra Leone aspires to gradually formalize land transactions while respecting the customary systems. Mandatory land transaction recording and registration can be an effective step towards the implementation of land related policy. In parallel, communication and sensitization campaigns will be carried out to avoid situations where ignorance of the requirement to register land on a first served basis may violate the rights of genuine land owners because their land can be registered to somebody more familiar with the system. Government decentralization and empowerment of municipalities should improve the process efficiency. A Crucial requirement in order to build an effective and modern land administration and management system is to abandon the manual recording system and move towards a digital and computerized one.

Land Tenure --- Property Rights

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Transport infrastructure is deemed to be central to development and consumes a large fraction of the development assistance envelope. Yet there is debate about the economic impact of road projects. This paper proposes an approach to assess the differential development impacts of alternative road construction and prioritize various proposals, using Nigeria as a case study. Recognizing that there is no perfect measure of economic well-being, a variety of outcome metrics are used, including crop revenue, livestock revenue, non-agricultural income, the probability of being multi-dimensionally poor, and local gross domestic product for Nigeria. Although the measure of transport is the most accurate possible, it is still endogenous because of the nonrandom placement of road infrastructure. This endogeneity is addressed using a seemingly novel instrumental variable termed the natural path: the time it would take to walk along the most logical route connecting two points without taking into account other, bias-causing economic benefits. Further, the analysis considers the potential endogeneity from nonrandom placement of households and markets through carefully chosen control variables. It finds that reducing transportation costs in Nigeria will increase crop revenue, non-agricultural income, the wealth index, and local gross domestic product. Livestock sales increase as well, although this finding is less robust. The probability of being multi-dimensionally poor will decrease. The results also cast light on income diversification and structural changes that may arise. These findings are robust to relaxing the exclusion restriction. The paper also demonstrates how to prioritize alternative road programs by comparing the expected development impacts of alternative New Partnership for Africa's Development projects.

Agriculture --- Banks and Banking Reform --- Development --- Economic Theory & Research --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Mpi --- Multi-Dimensional Poverty Index --- Nepad --- Roads --- Roads and Highways Performance --- Rural Development --- Rural Roads & Transport --- Transport --- Transport Economics Policy & Planning