FAO has handed over IT equipment to the Ministry of Lands, Survey & Environment, Katsina State. This equipment was installed within the Ministry to establish a Local Area Network (LAN) and allowed a computerized registration system to be implemented in the Ministry’s Deeds Registry using FAO’s open source SOLA software which has been customized specifically for use in Katsina State. IT equipment was also supplied to the Livestock Division of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to assist them to map community grazing reserves and the Forestry Department to map forest gazetted reserves in the state. This mapping data will be made available to all Ministries through a website.

These equipment and the associated support and training, is part of a FAO project for the Implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines for Responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGT) in Nigeria, funded by UK DFID and is focused on 3 states; Katsina, Kebbi and Anambra.

The equipment handed over includes:

10.KVA solar power equipment, Servers, workstations, wide A3 printers, Android tablets, scanners, backup drives and Applicatio software.

Similar equipment will be handed over to the Ministry of Lands, Urban Development & Housing, Kebbi State, where the same computerized registration system will also be implemented through the Nigeria VGGT project

 The Nigeria VGGT project continues through to June 2016 in a phased roll-out of the SOLA registration system in both Katsina and Kebbi States and ongoing support to the various activities supported by the project including the mapping of community grazing and forest reserves and making tenure information more easily accessible.

  What is SOLA?

In 2012 the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) completed a project to develop and pilot open source cadastre and registration software. This project has been called the Solutions for Open Land Administrationn (SOLA) Software Project 

Now that the Voluntary Guidelines for the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests have been endorsed by the Food Security Council (FAO, 2012), the attention has moved to what support can be given to countries wanting to implement the Voluntary Guidelines. In that context the SOLA software is an enabling technology and directly addresses the Records of Tenure provisions and also facilitates, to varying degrees, most of the other guidelines..

For more information about the Nigeria VGGT project please contact

Louise Setshwaelo

FAO Representative in Nigeria

FAO Representation

Old CBN Building N°4 Zaria Street Off Samuel Ladoke, Akintola Boulevard Garkii II, Abuja

E-mail: [email protected]