Modernizing Angola's Land Administration System: Enhancing Urban Planning and Property Registration through GIS

Angola’s rapid urbanization, coupled with unregulated land transactions and informal property construction, posed significant challenges to land management and urban planning. With 68% of the population living in urban areas and high growth in Luanda, the government faced an urgent need to streamline land registration and cadastre systems. Partnering with Mitrelli Group subsidiary GEODATA, Angola implemented a cutting-edge GIS-based Land Administration Modernization Program (LAMP).

Through Esri’s ArcGIS software, drones, and geospatial AI, GEODATA created a distributed cadastre system, mapping over 450,000 urban parcel boundaries with high accuracy. Drone-acquired imagery was processed with photogrammetric techniques to produce detailed orthophotographs and 3D models, enhancing parcel boundary precision. Simultaneously, a comprehensive address database was developed, integrating historical data and street naming conventions. This data was incorporated into a national cadastre system, deployed across 22 registry offices and 18 provinces, enabling seamless bidirectional communication between land registries and property databases.

The initiative also supported legal mass registration of 100,000 properties under an affordable housing project, ensuring secure property ownership and fostering tax revenue growth. The new system set the stage for Angola’s ambitious plan to register over one million properties by 2027, supporting urban development and economic expansion.