The Addis Ababa City Administration is set to conduct land audit and registration in the capital with the view of updating the current land possession status of the City as well as relocating land obtained ‘illegally.’
Deputy mayor Takele Uma broke the news today in the 3rd regular session of Addis Ababa City Administration Council held on August 3, 2019.
According to the Mayor, the City Administration will look into issues of land grabbing and misappropriation through the audit that will be conducted in the current fiscal year.
The City aims to reclaim undeveloped and illegally obtained lands appropriating such areas to solve the housing problem in the City. Takele added that repossessed lands will be allocated for those who are registered to receive public condominium houses but haven’t received homes yet.
However, the City Administration is not going to build the condominium houses, and instead, the beneficiaries will build the condominium houses themselves in organized associations. In addition, the Administration plans to partner with investors in housing projects.
The city Administration is currently building 125, 000 condominium houses and the City spends close to 10 billion Br every year on housing projects. 176,000 residents have received houses thus far, while close to 659,000 people are on the waiting list.
The mayor also added that farmers in the City are prone to land grabbing, and the Administration aims to give them landholding rights.
This is not the first time the Administration panned to audit land. In 2018, the Addis Ababa Land Holding Registration and Information Agency planned to inspect nearly 600,000 parcels in the City by 2022.
Around a year ago, Addis Abeba City Administration, after auditing 139 real estate developers, reclaimed land plots covering a total of 41 hectares, claiming that real estate developers illegally possessed it.
Moreover, two years ago, soon after Takele came to power, in a much-publicized event, he led the repossession of 154 separate plots of undeveloped land from investors, diplomatic missions, and government institutions including MIDROC and The African Union
