The problem of low productivity is fundamental to the long-term deteriorating trend in agricultural and per capita food production that has characterized African agriculture during the past decades. Widespread desertification and degradation of African farmlands and the present heavy dependence on natural rainfall which are some of the causes of low productivity, reflect the inability of African member States to sufficiently invest in and develop technologies and farming systems suitable for adoption by small farmers.

The paper deals with land tenure and economic development in Upper Volta. .The entire country lies within the savannah zone which runs down West Africa, from Cape Verde, to Chad, from the Saharan. Sahel in the North to the forest zones bordering the Atlantic in the South.

The purpose, and often the result, of the legislation which has been gradually introduced over the last fifty years has been to replace a system of unwritten customary rights which varied from region to region with a relatively simple system of land ownership based on written and published texts, familiar to all and applicable to the territory as a whole.

The Second United Nations Regional Cartographic Conference for Africa held at Tunis in September 1966, the Niger in association with Madagascar; presented a resolution recommending that the ECA organize a seminar on cadastre. It was hoped that such a seminar would enable the Niger to become acquainted with and compare the latest methods used by certain African countries and possibly to benefit from their experience in establishing a cadastre in the Niger.