Robert Ouko Breaks New Ground With A Biometric Land Registration System
Robert Ouko(C)
The agony and unending sorry tales of frustrations many people who intend to own or already own land go through in the hands of unscrupulous land registration officials and questionable land owners is poised to end following the efforts of a JKUAT student who has developed an innovative solution aimed at streamlining and expediting land registration and title deeds acquisition.
The biometric land registration system developed by Robert Ouko and marketed by Jennifer Wanjiku Mwai, seeks to forestall land ownership issues such as land grabbing prevalent in Kenya and many parts of the world.
Ouko says “I came up with this idea to solve the rampant land problem in Kenya and the world because land is a resource that concerns everybody in the world and it is indeed closer to the heart.”
If this digital system is adopted, disputes over ownership of land will be a thing of the past because the application makes it possible for every person to have his or her land details captured using the fingerprints thus become difficult for anybody to grab another persons land without their knowledge.
The Biometric Land Registration System allows people to register their land by use of fingerprints but if a person doesn’t have fingerprints because of accidents or any other reason, the person can be registered using his or her iris for face detection. and if a person is blind he or she can be registered by use of a bar code reader which uniquely identifies the person or the owner of the title deed.
This innovation relies on the unique features of the human being such as iris and fingerprints to capture and store a persons land title information like location of the land, size, land photo, personal details of the person registering for land.
Should one opt to sell the land or do land transfer after registering biometricaly Robert says , “the land ownership will replace/exchange the finger print with that of the person who wants to buy the land. Therefore the person who has bought the land becomes the current land owner, while at the same time the details of the person who sold the land are deactivated automatically in the system.”
If one dies before transferring the land, then the next of kin such as son, daughter or any person who wishes to claim the land would be required t o seek authorization from the area chef by filling all the official relevant forms and death permit of the deceased before land transfer is done in favour of say the son, daughter or the person who is laying claim for the ownership of the land, this becoming the current land owner.
The students contacted he, and they have already patented their innovation with the Kenya Industrial property institute.
Unique features of the biometric land registration system:-
- Prevents double title land registration.
- Prevents possession of someone’s land without his or her authority since for the land transfer to take place both the parties must exchange the fingerprints and confirmation message must be accepted by both parties for land transfer to take place.
- The system will help in land search, certificate of land search and application of the title deeds automatically.
Robert Ouko is a JKUAT-IT Student at the main campus.
story by Patrick Amunavi