Digitizing Physical Assets on Blockchain 2.0: A Smart Contract Approach to Land Transfer and Registry

Abstract

The real estate market in many African countries reflects inefficiency, indiscipline, suspicion, and fraudulent activity. Beyond the direct personal and financial costs, the friction of the existing property transfer process prevents assets from being utilized and valued at their maximum utility. The frustrations and lack of trust affect most real estate markets across Africa, including Ghana, where we will focus the investigation and examples in this paper. Remarkably, the existing Ethereum blockchain platform and smart contract capabilities can be used to bring efficiency, accuracy, trust, and value to the property transfer and registration process without a significant investment in new infrastructure.