In order to uplift the economy of the low-income people in Namibia, the Government of Namibia has
started investigating alternative forms of land tenure aimed at uplifting the socioeconomic status of the
lowest income sectors of the community. The Ministry of Lands and Resettlement launched the lands
project to look for innovative solutions to this challenge. An approach referred to as "Flexible Land Tenure
System (FLTS) for Namibia" was developed, which will be debated in parliament soon, aimed at providing
simpler, more affordable and faster forms of secure tenure to low income communities in the country and
to urban informal settlement residents in particular.
This research concentrates on the pace of land administration, specifically on how the GIS can help in
handling the land administration of the FLTS projects at City of Windhoek which is responsible for such
tasks of managing and analysing the FLTS spatial and non-spatial data already in position of the City of
Windhoek. Scientific literature review, focus group interviews and field observations were used as the
methods of acquiring data. A prototype based on Microsoft Access and ArcView was developed using the
City of Windhoek’s data. This was done mainly to prove the capabilities and role of GIS in FLTS to the
implementation team of FLTS of the City of Windhoek.
The findings of this research are that, although the flexible land tenure bill is not yet gazetted (fully
enforced in operation and implemented), the City of Windhoek has already started implementing the FLTS
bill by allocating its land to the poor and the low-income people on the standards set in the flexible land
tenure bill. In the recent development this research has further revealed that the City of Windhoek has
started motivating informal settlers to form associations, referred to as saving groups (inter changeably
known as ‘schemes’) in order to acquire block erven (big plot of land) for security of tenure and
affordability of services. The current data of land information of the low-income people is managed by
paper and pen methods. The other result is that the focus group members supported the use of GIS in
administering the FLTS data, which is used to motivate the need of GIS for the AutoCAD and GIS
software vender supplying and administering Autodesk Map 3D to the City of Windhoek.
Although the flexible land tenure system is based on two new types of tenures, starter title and land hold
title. Starter title being the lowest tenure system, the City of Windhoek are currently motivating existing
saving groups (schemes) with good reputation on basic services payments to start looking at the
possibility of acquiring such block erven on this title and subsequently to land hold title as soon as the act
is gazetted. This paper also reveals that FLTS has been tested and still needs to be introduced in other
parts of the country.