(COINTELEGRAPH) Overstock Subsidiary Partners With Zambian Gov’t on Blockchain Land Registry
COMMENT - Watch out with these 'title deeds', because the bank ends up owning the land. They know most startups go bust, so they are in it for the land. - MrK(COINTELEGRAPH) Overstock Subsidiary Partners With Zambian Gov’t on Blockchain Land Registry
By William Suberg
Zambia has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the blockchain land registry subsidiary of American retail giant Overstock, the company revealed in a press release July 31.
Under the agreement, Overstock’s Medici Land Governance (MLG) will work with the Zambian government on overhauling land ownership, allowing rural landowners to legitimize their estates and gain access to the financial world.
“Without formal ownership, individuals struggle to obtain access to credit and public services, while governments are limited in their ability to collect taxes, enforce property rights, and plan for economic expansion and innovation,” the release explains, continuing:
“Using blockchain and other technologies, Medici Land Governance […] will create systems to collect and easily secure property ownership information.”
Discussing the Medici venture, the subsidiary’s CEO Dr. Ali El Husseini called its partnership with Zambia “momentous.”
“[The partnership] has the potential to be a real, sustainable game-changer in reducing poverty and supporting economic development on a large scale,” he added.
Blockchain land projects have been underway across the world for several years, the technology offering a promising solution to fragmented paper records and unverifiable claims.
This week, the world’s fourth-largest bank by assets, Agricultural Bank of China, confirmed it had issued a blockchain-based loan backed by land.
Overstock continues to make multiple inroads across blockchain and cryptocurrency-related spheres, despite warnings earlier this year that its share price was suffering and its future could involve upheaval.
The company currently has fourteen ventures in its Medici Blockchain accelerator, to which MLG is the most recent addition.
Labels: LAND REFORM, PF, ZAMBIA
posted by MrK @ 11:13 PM
3 Comments:
The use of Overstock and the like for Government records is very good for Africa where there is less objection to change and faster implementation. I have seen a bunch of ex IBM guys who are now at www.ammeris.com working on some projects like this in Kenya and Rwanda
In the neoliberal context, this just means a financialization of agriculture, which is not good for agriculture or ordinary people.
The idea that people must have title deeds to their land so they can go to a bank and get a mortgage or a loan already implies that the bank takes their land if they have a bad season, or any other mishap.
That's unacceptable, and no way to grow agriculture. It was not how agriculture grew under colonialism either.
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