Imagine your land title on a card, instead of a piece of paper. Now imagine that smart card being able to connect to the pattern in your palm to prove you are actually the owner of a given piece of land. That is exactly what the new Buganda Land Board e-title, launched on Friday last week, will do.
The smart card based title which is now available to tenants on Kabaka’s land for Shs100,000 uses a technology known as palm vein biometrics, which is a technique of identification through analysis of the patterns of blood vessels visible from the surface of the skin.
At the ceremony at Kampala Serena Hotel where the card was officially unveiled by the Prime Minister of Buganda Charles Peter Mayiga, the technology was lauded as the cure to rampant land fraud, to say nothing of the fact that users will be able to carry the BLB LE-CARD in their wallets.
Clearly impressed, Mr Mayiga noted how misrepresentation and falsification of documents, two major issues in land transactions, would be a thing of the past. It was with this in mind that Buganda kingdom had “embarked on identifying a unique but simple, secure system that will assure safety of land owners’ documents and identity”, he said.
Similarly impressed was ICT minister Hon. Frank Tumwebaze, who thanked BLB for embracing what he called digital commerce and called upon other stakeholders like Ministry of Lands and the National ID project to work with BLB and provide a single window for various services for Ugandans. The card is the product of a partnership between BLB and Viva Compliance Technology. Companies that would like to get the card will part with Shs200,000.