Urban land administration practices in emerging cities of Ethiopia: The case of Shashemene city of Oromia regional state, southern Ethiopia

Sound land administration needs effective good governance which has become a major area of focus by the government of Ethiopia. However, there is still a gap in applying the principles of good governance in urban land administration. The objective of this study was to assess the practice of urban land administration in Shashemene City of Oromia Regional State, Southern Ethiopia. To achieve this objective, the study has applied multi-stage representative sampling technique. The researcher has employed descriptive research design and mixed research approach. The study used 129 systematically selected sample households from four sampled kebeles. The primary data was collected from the city municipal officials and experts, focus group discussions participants as well as households by the researcher with the help of enumerators and secondary data were collected from rules and regulations, documents concerning land and property registration system, different documents on good governance principles and official records. Qualitative data were analyzed by narration, while quantitative data were analyzed through descriptive statistics. The cumulative finding reveals that there is an inefficient as well as ineffective land administration system and administrative, technical and capacity problems were the major challenges in the study area. Finally, the study stated improving the participation of people, striving for high level integration between service rendering departments and offices, instituting a pro poor land allocation and management system, strict controlling and evaluation system up on employees, applying the modern cadastral system of land registration and setting clear and uniform work procedure as recommendations based on the findings of the study.