Blockchain Is Changing Lives In Africa

Startups from Cape Town to Nairobi think the budding technology is the future of the continent.

- Jillian Keenan

Elsa’s father was a businessman. He was always looking for a good deal, and as the owner of a brick factory in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, he had money to invest. So in 2005, when he learned about a 2,000-square-meter piece of land for sale in a part of town where he expected property values to boom, he bought it. The deal was formal: Elsa’s father paid 100,000 birr ($3,641) in cash, signed the contracts in front of witnesses, and got a receipt.

But there was one thing missing: a deed. So when Elsa’s father unexpectedly died just after the deal closed, her family was thrown into crisis.

“As soon as [the previous owner] found out my father died, she changed her tune,” says Elsa, who asked that her surname not be published while the court case is ongoing. “We’ve spent the last 10 years going in and out of court.”

The long duration of the trials only raised the stakes, since it turned out Elsa’s father was right: The property’s value did skyrocket. The protracted legal battle has already cost the family more than 50,000 birr ($1,820) in legal fees, and even though courts have ruled in their favor several times already, the series of appeals seems endless. In the meantime, Elsa can’t capitalize on her dad’s investment: She can’t build on the property, sell a portion of it, or even put up a fence.

“If there were a land registration, none of this would have happened. We wouldn’t have spent 10 years in court,” she says. “But I don’t want to give up, because it’s my father’s land.”