Since 2010, the Government of Rwanda addressed land tenure through a series of actions including the establishment of institutional and administrative structures for land management and administration. At district, town, and municipality level, District Land Bureaus (DLBs), complemented by sector and cell level land committees, assumed responsibility for land administration and planning. After careful piloting in 2008/09, a process for systematic low cost demarcation and adjudication using aerial photography or high resolution satellite imagery was roll-out nationally.

This paper looks at a variety of technical issues, challenges, and problems that arise during systematic first registration programs, their causes and what can be done to deal with them. Its aim is to provide practical advice to those who are designing or engaged in first registration programs that use the systematic adjudication approach and also those who supervise such programs so that the issues covered in this paper can be eliminated or their negative impact reduced.