Posted
19 Mar 2025
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Lesotho
Posted19 Mar 2025
This article was written by Ntsebo Putsoa. Ntsebo is an accomplished land management and administration adviser working with LEI in Lesotho. She writes from her previous experience as the Land Registration Director within the Lesotho Land Administration Authority (LAA) and recently as a project specialist on the Land and Gender consultancy, part of the Market Driven Irrigated Horticulture (MDIH) project, which is funded under the Millennium Challenge Corporation Lesotho Second Compact.
Sustainable land management involves maintaining the balance between environmental, economic and social needs, ensuring that land use is both productive and resilient. It is key to ensuring that future generations can also utilise and benefit from this crucial resource. By ensuring that land ownership, rights, and responsibilities are clearly defined and registered, a government is taking the first steps toward the goal of sustainable land management. When done properly, land administration systems help to provide tenure security and maintain and protect equal land rights. It can also enhance transparency and accountability, which reduces disputes and promotes fair access to resources.
There are multiple reasons why governments establish a land registration[1] system – these include:
Lesotho, where I come from, is a small monarchy in Southern Africa that is completely landlocked by South Africa. Covering only 30,000 square kilometers, many people call it the “Switzerland of Africa” due to its mountainous terrain.
Administrative and Political Map of Lesotho.
Land in Lesotho is owned by Basotho (the people of Lesotho) and vested in the King under the leasehold system. The Land Act 1979 moved allocation powers from chiefs to allocating committees or local authorities.
While registration of land is clearly a public good and has multiple benefits, in Lesotho, registration processes in rural areas face many challenges. Below I cite what I consider the six most pressing challenges that Lesotho faces in relation to the registration of land in rural areas. It is important to recognise that in Lesotho there are two registration processes – first the allocation of land or verification by the Community Council and second, the registration of land under a lease by the Land Administration Authority. I then describe some solutions to these pressing challenges.
Despite the introduction of laws encouraging registration and permitting women to own and inherit land[2], the situation today in rural Lesotho remains mostly unchanged. Women are still hesitant to register their land. Rural people still hold on to a cultural history that only men, as the heads of households, have the right to own land.
As a result of this belief, women’s interests over land are not registered either individually or jointly. Unregistered plots of land are often left with women while their husbands or other male relatives work in neighboring countries. If their husband dies, these women are left vulnerable to land grabs from the family that they married into.
Legislation historically also posed no limits to the amount of land that could be allocated to any one person. This omission led to people (mostly men) being allocated enormous tracts of land that were recorded only by the chiefs (the national land registration system had not yet been introduced). Over time, this information was either lost, misplaced or destroyed and property boundaries were not known or began to overlap.
In an effort to curb this, in 2006 Community Council authorities were established, and Land Allocating Committees and Subcommittees within the Community Councils were given powers to allocate and keep records on land. This led to an upsurge in land registration, especially in urban areas. Rural people were still hesitant to register their properties due to persisting adherence to traditional and cultural land ownership beliefs.
Today allocation records are still stored manually in the Councils, and they often get lost. This leads to duplicate allocation, encroachment, evictions and unclear parcel boundaries – resulting in disputes and sometimes violence as people try to assert what they believe are their rights.
Furthermore, Community Councils work in silos – they are independent and all land allocation and ownership information is recorded manually within that particular Council. Due to lack of capacity, there is no integration of land administration systems between the allocating authorities and the national land registration authority (Land Administration Authority), who, as noted above is responsible for the issuance of the strongest form of land title in Lesotho – leases.
The lack of express requirement to register land remains a barrier to motivating communities to register their property. Section 16 of the Land Act 2010 governs Lesotho’s land management and administration and states that “An allottee of residential land in a rural area may apply to the Commissioner for a lease in respect of that land.” According to this section, unless the land is intended for commercial use, landowners in rural areas are free to choose whether or not to register their land.
Land registration in Lesotho is undertaken by members of the Land Allocation Subcommittee who are elected. They are not necessarily qualified to perform their land management and administration duties. They are assisted by an Assistant Physical Planner, and in many cases they have little exposure or experience regarding land management matters. Land Equity International’s (LEI) Capacity Development Needs Assessment conducted at the Phamong Community Council in Mohale’s Hoek district in late 2024 uncovered that member of the Land Allocation Subcommittee there all had a primary school-level education, and none had experience in land-related matters.
The lack of knowledge and experience of the local authorities has multiple consequences – not least that land is registered contrary to the law, and further, that many people are simply not aware of the law or the recent changes in land law.
Lack of transparency and clarity in land records is another problem for rural registration processes. Land allocation occurs when an individual applies to the local council (Community Council) offices for recognition of their interest in a piece of land. The Land Allocation Subcommittee is then tasked to verify if the land is vacant before the application is approved. Due to a lack of information regarding past allocations (see above), verification is difficult and sometimes the land of someone else is (re)allocated to a new applicant. Decisions around verification are also undoubtedly often influenced by politics, and as a result people lose trust in the council.
Thabana-li-mmele in Maseru, Lesotho.
Lack of transport is another barrier – mostly for registration of leases. The LAA offices are all based in urban areas and are not easily reachable by those residing in rural communities. In addition to transport costs, land registration and lease-related transaction fees are also costly, including survey fees, stamp and transfer duties. If people cannot access these offices to register their rights and/or be presented proper documentation (lease) of their property rights, landowners are unable to use their property as security on loans or credit applications and long-term land investments are discouraged.
As a result of significant land law reform in Lesotho, women can now become landowners and have the right to freely own and register their land. However, women in rural areas often deny themselves the right to own property in adherence with long-standing customary practices and cultural understandings regarding land ownership.
The existence of clear legislation allowing women to own and register land means that Lesotho is headed in the right direction. Together with their spouses, women are allowed to register their land under the joint titling scheme. In the event of one partner’s death, the surviving spouse is entitled to all assets. Additionally, to demonstrate greater land rights of women, they are permitted to inherit land from their maiden families.
However, because information on laws and changes to the law is not sufficiently disseminated in rural areas, the issue of women’s lack of legal awareness persists. Launching an awareness campaign to educate women in Lesotho on the existing land laws is an essential step that must be taken to encourage women to fully take advantage of these legal reforms.
Women can be very influential in their families. It is important to empower them with knowledge to take care of their land. In support of progressive land legislation like that in Lesotho, women worldwide are raising awareness by organising women-focused conferences on land issues. I attended the first African Women Land Professional Associations Conference, hosted by the International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) in Tanzania in November 2024. It was an invaluable opportunity for women from different land professions to gather to discuss the role of African women in land ownership.
One of the objectives of the conference was to create future pathways: actionable strategies to enhance the role and visibility of women in achieving gender responsive land governance, ensuring inclusive access and guaranteed rights to land for all. Launching awareness-raising initiatives to educate rural women about their land rights will be imperative to ensuring the success of gender-responsive land governance.
Systematic land registration is one way to formalise land tenure and secure property rights on a mass scale.
The front page of a lease document in Lesotho.
LEI was contracted to oversee the land regularisation[3] of Lesotho urban property under the first MCC-Lesotho Compact during a three-year period between 2010 and 2013. The initiative ended with more than 90% of the 55,000 identified properties registered. This has made it easier for people to apply for loans and strengthened tenure security.
The following graph of LAA land registration statistics illustrates the program’s effectiveness. During property regularisation in urban areas, between 2010 and 2013, the number of registered leases increased significantly to approximately 51,863, compared to 17,388 from the previous 28 years (1981-2009). As evidenced by the LAA, where mortgages are registered, more people are utilizing their leases as collateral for bank mortgages since 2011, following the regularization of land. This indicates increased confidence in the system, and the value that leases provide.
Number of Registered Leases for Urban Residential and Commercial and Rural Commercial Land in Lesotho.
Councillors involved in land allocation should be trained in the importance of transparent and equitable land allocation, registration and the legislation around these practices. They should also be empowered with the appropriate tools to work productively in these areas. This will enable them to be meaningfully engaged in their work to undertake proper registration of land ownership and will build trust in the community towards the registration process.
If development plans are in place, they will make it easier for rural council members to allocate, capture, and register parcels in relation to the land number and boundaries. To achieve this, the government institutions and rural authorities responsible for land management and administration should create development plans that are easily allocated to the general public. The LAA could obtain the information for allotted plots electronically, making it easier and less expensive to register leases for rural residents.
To account for the sporadic application by the rural population, land transaction expenses such as those charged by private surveyors, transfer fees, and land authority stamp duties should be lowered.
A successful land administration system, like the one at LAA, will be essential to collaborate with rural Community Councils on registration. To make the information easily accessible, such systems must to be integrated.
Registering rural land parcels will improve standards of living by documenting and protecting people’s rights, providing tenure security, and reducing conflicts over land. These documented interests can then be used as collateral for loans, increasing agricultural yields, industry, and infrastructure development. Thus, registering land within rural areas and ensuring that each piece of land is appropriately allocated and registered, is essential.
In summary, the implementation of effective land management and rights registration will motivate individuals to take good care of their land and make acceptable use of it. If its land is registered, Lesotho can move past the “low-income” designation and see economic and developmental growth.
[1] Registration: an official process of documenting and clarifying ownership rights to land (as they are) to land and maintaining this record in an accountable system land administration system.
[2] Legal Capacity of Married Persons Act 2006, the Land Act 2010, and the newly enacted Administration of Estates and Inheritance Act 2024.
[3] Regularisation: a term often synonymous with registration, where regularisation is a process that aims to formally recognize and secure land rights for individuals or communities who have been occupying or using land informally, often in unplanned settlements or areas with unclear legal status. In such cases, boundaries may be adjusted to better comply with planning guidelines.
Cover image: Rural land identification in Lesotho.
In spirit of reconciliation, Land Equity International acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea, and community. We pay respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
