Canadian Company Launches Groundbreaking Land Management App in Ghana
Landano International, a Canadian‑based company, is committed to breaking the barriers in Ghana’s land management system. Tackling Ghana’s Long-Standing Land Conflict Crisis For years, land management has been a significant challenge in Ghana, leading to numerous conflicts and social issues. Research by Ebenezer Ankomah Gyamera PhD, in 2016, found that land cases constitute about 59 percent of total court cases in Ghana, with an average increase of 25 percent in cases every year. Disturbingly, only 10 percent of these cases are settled every year. The findings also concluded that the major cause of land conflict is the sale of land to multiple owners. Given this, Landano International has developed a robust mobile application that monitors and reports in real time the details of land ownership. Stakeholder Engagement with Traditional Leaders In a stakeholders summit with Adansi chiefs at Adansi Asokwa in the Ashanti region of Ghana, Nana Kwadwo Safo, Ghana’s Community Ambassador for Landano, explained that an in‑depth study has been conducted to understand the problem at hand, and he is optimistic that their robust system will put an end to these issues. “Our main goal is to curb the conflicts associated with land management. Our team of experts, after extensive research and deliberation, has developed a platform that enables landowners to manage and track their lands on their phones, eliminating the need for travel. This will help traditional leaders to know who owns what land and also prevent the sale of a single land to multiple owners.” He further stated that Landano will be working collaboratively with the Lands Commission and the Department of Stool Lands to ensure that land conflicts become a thing of the past using their state‑of‑the‑art application. A Vision for Transparency and Collaboration Present at the gathering was Dan Junior Amankona, the Chief Commercial & Marketing Officer of Landano, who underlined the importance of openness and collaboration. He stated: “Our unity here today is inspired by a common love for Ghana and its people. It is truly a privilege and a blessing to collaborate with such visionary leaders. As the son of the chief of Kato, a town in the Bono region, I am deeply familiar with the challenges that chiefs encounter as they strive to elevate their communities. At Landano, we pride ourselves on valuing the insights of chiefs and their constituents, and we aspire to deliver a sustainable solution to Ghana’s land management systems. Our model will ultimately facilitate the connection of chiefs and landowners with international funding opportunities that would foster the development of Ghana’s communities and economy.” The Excitement of Nananom The overjoyed Gyasehene of Bodwesango in the Ashanti region of Ghana, Nana Adu Gyamfi III, described the day as one of the happiest days of his life. He stated that being able to manage, monitor, and track land on a mobile phone is a novelty to him, and it is something that would be embraced wholeheartedly. He believes this innovation is a game‑changer and will definitely solve land disputes. Nana Akwasi Buaben, the Gyaasehene of Adansi Dompoase, also alluded to the fact that for years, chiefs all over Ghana have had issues managing their lands, especially with setting boundaries. However, with the assurance and training given, he is optimistic that it will be a thing of the past. He used the opportunity to heap praises on the Landano team and pledge support for the project. Institutional Support from the Stool Lands Secretariat On the part of the Stool Lands Secretariat, Dr. Isaac Osei Boahen, Adansihene Stool Lands Manager, stated that his office will benefit greatly from the project. He believes that boundary issues, which cause a lot of conflicts, will be solved and ultimately result in an increase in revenue generation. Core Challenges in Ghana’s Land Administration Stool lands in Ghana constitute about 80% of land holdings in Ghana, but have consistently been plagued with: Landano’s Blockchain-Based Approach The Landano team believes that these issues can be improved by introducing its higher‑quality, blockchain‑based records management for land administration using sustainable web3 software. Pilot Project Success in Rural Ashanti Region Landano embarked on its innovative pilot project in March 2022, focusing on community outreach in the rural Ashanti region, specifically the town Hiawu Besease. This groundbreaking initiative was led by their talented Head Geospatial Engineer, Abdul Razak, who brought his extensive experience and unique expertise to the fore. The project focused on land management systems, leveraging technology to improve accuracy, transparency, and efficiency. It integrated elements of local knowledge, cultural norms, and legal guidelines, aiming to strike a balance between modern methods and traditional practices. This comprehensive endeavour aimed not only to enhance the productivity and sustainability of the land but also to empower the local communities by involving them directly in the process. The end goal of this pioneering work was to provide a blueprint for similar projects in other rural regions, thereby contributing significantly to the broader economic development of Ghana. In attendance at the summit were chiefs from Adansi Fomena division, Adansi Dompoase division and Bodwesango division. The full complement of the project is expected to be released soon.
Landano, Winner of the Battle of the Builders – Cardano Summit 2024
This year at the Cardano 2024 Dubai Summit, Landano was awarded the winner of the prestigious Battle of the Builders Competition. Landano’s project was selected over a highly competitive field of more than 30 startups, marking a significant milestone for our team and underscoring our dedication to advancing blockchain innovation. The Battle of the Builders is one of the most anticipated events at the Cardano Summit, showcasing the most innovative projects in the blockchain industry. Landano emerged as the winner among the final three competitors, securing a grand prize package worth nearly $300,000 USD. This package includes cash, cryptocurrency, business consulting services, technical support, and an exclusive invitation to the World Economic Forum in Davos, all designed to elevate our business to new heights. This recognition affirms our commitment to building a transformative platform within the Cardano ecosystem. Our mission remains to harness blockchain technology to address real-world land challenges. Winning this distinguished competition brings us closer to achieving that vision, reaffirming that Landano has the potential to revolutionize global land rights management and establish a profitable, sustainable solution.
Landano Technical Architecture: What’s New In 2024
Landano is a software platform for creating and managing decentralized land right records using the Cardano blockchain. We created a proof-of-concept application during Landano’s kick-off stage in 2022. We eased from software development in 2023 to focus on better understanding our potential user base, business opportunities, and matching up to investor profiles. We’ve summarized a lot of that activity in this update video. The Landano project is now ready to combine these efforts into a Minimum Viable Product that will perform core Landano functions on Testnet first before launching on Cardano Mainnet for our users in Ghana and Mozambique. This is a good time to check-in behind the curtains and get a better understanding of the technology architecture we’re implementing to deliver the Landano software platform in 2024. The Mendix Solution The Landano MVP we created in 2022 was developed using the Mendix low-code platform. Our CTO Dorus van der Kroft is a senior Mendix consultant and is leading the development and implementation of the Landano software. Over the course of the past two years we did investigate a number of other candidate technologies on which to build our off-chain components to interact with our on-chain Cardano code. However, Mendix is the right fit for a platform like ours, which we consider to be in the enterprise software market, given that we intend to onboard millions of users. Mendix is primarily used to create and manage large portfolios of business-critical applications across organizational and technical boundaries. It is an integrated application platform-as-a-service (aPaaS) offering for designing, building, deploying, and managing enterprise apps. Mendix is classified by Gartner as a low-code application platform that solves complex software development at scale and with speed. Mendix applications are cloud native by default making all components built on the platform very scalable, resilient, and portable. The low-code methodology also means developers can use Mendix to deliver software quickly to ensure that products and services are brought to market faster while optimizing operational processes. The platform is accessible to developers and administrators through the Developer Portal, which provides access to apps as well as services for requirements management, development, and deployment in the operation and administration of apps and app services. The platform includes Mendix Studio Pro as well as the Mendix Marketplace, which features hundreds of publicly available building blocks to speed up development. The Landano project received a Project Catalyst Fund 11 grant recently to leverage the work we have done so far with our Landano platform to create generic Cardano plugins for the Mendix Marketplace using our Landano code. This will allow the large ecosystem of Mendix enterprise developers to use Cardano NFTs and smart contracts from within the Mendix development environment directly. This sub-project holds a lot of potential for bringing in new enterprise software development talent into the Cardano ecosystem. Mendix allows our Landano team to develop on one core code base and use it to deliver both desktop and mobile applications. You can find the most recent version of our mobile apps in this Github repo. Keep in mind that this is still the experimental proof-of-concept version at the moment. Deployment Architecture Mendix Cloud is a PaaS-based cloud offering based on Cloud Foundry technology that runs on the IaaS layer of Amazon Web Services. Our Landano Mendix application runs in a container provided by Cloud Foundry. These have standard support for horizontal and vertical scaling as well as auto-healing. Scaling up and down can be done without any downtime by simply adding or removing containers. The Mendix Cloud Foundry layer is deployed in multiple availability zones for each AWS region. An availability zone is a physical data-center location of AWS within a region. A Mendix application needs a database and file storage to operate. In the Mendix Cloud, these aPaaS services are directly consumed from the AWS service layer. For the database, the Mendix Cloud makes use of RDS PostgreSQL, and for the file storage, it makes use of S3. Both of these services are Multi-AZ configured, so data is replicated across data centers. All this Mendix infrastructure is used as a processing pipeline for the Landano application modules. There are no permanent records stored within the Mendix platform. The records generated by Landano are stored as Cardano NFTs with supporting documentation packages provided on the permissionless Arweave storage network. This is described further below. The Landano platform and the Mendix plug-ins we are creating allow low-code developers to combine the best of battle-tested enterprise software with the trust guarantees provided by the decentralized Cardano blockchain through its eUTXO NFTs and smart contracts. Domain-driven Development Mendix enables model-driven development through Mendix Studio Pro, which provides visual drag-and-drop development tools for workflows, user interfaces, data, logic, and navigation using no-code and low-code development. Mendix interprets the resulting model at runtime thereby maintaining the bond between model and application which improves greatly upon managing legacy code and technical debt once a platform is in production. Direct model execution also removes code generation overhead and provides significant advantages by accommodating live changes and consistency checks, controlled extensions, and dynamic monitoring analysis at runtime. The Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) Landano software and record-keeping requirements are ISO standards compliant to ensure the sustainability, interoperability, credibility and legal value of the land right documentation it creates and manages. The foundational model that drives the Landano domain is based on ISO standard 19152, the Land Administration Domain Model (LADM). The LADM provides a standardized global vocabulary and entity model for land administration. It has become the predominant reference standard for land administration software systems. Landano has implemented the LADM as a Mendix domain underpinning our business logic. In addition to managing the domain model, Mendix Studio allows our developers to create responsive user interfaces from a declarative interface. This helsp to ensure standardized browser compliance across the various device interfaces that Landano is accessible on. The last component of note is the Mendix-Arkly interface. Arkly is a platform developed in collaboration with the Landano team to provide permanent, decentralized document storage on the Arweave network. Blockchain applications