*1.1. Rational Justification for Mergers*

The rational justification and benefits of merger arises from different perspectives such as increasing institutional performance, improvement of customer service, efficient operation of land market [9]. A merger is an agreement, based on voluntarily, which unites two or more existing institutions into one [10]. There are several reasons why organizations merge. When looking at mergers, it is important to look at the subject on a case by case basis as each merger has both merits and demerits [11]. Mergers are mainly done to avoid duplication of responsibility across institutions [9]. Avoiding duplication would have economic benefits and help reduce bureaucracies. This in turn increases in-stitutional performance and reduces misuse of resources. Due to this, mergers have re-ceived frequent and thorough study by researchers [12]. The initiative to merge land regis-tration and cadaster institutions coined from FIG commission 7 where the research find-ings of 1994 show that the strategic management and operations of cadastral systems are vested in different organizations [13]. Pursuing these research findings, cadaster 2014 vi-sion was articulated by directing emphasis on merger of the land registration and cadaster institutions. Their findings show (1) improvement of customer service with increased efficiency (2) provision of more data in better quality (3) provision of data that are sufficiently accurate (4) provision of data to the government and citizens at the right time. The most reiterated overarching importance of cadastral institutional rearrangement is to pro-vide efficient operation of the land market. Following this, many developed countries (e.g., Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, Turkey, and Belgium) followed the principle of merger. For instance, Sweden started the cadaster and registry merging in 2008. Following this, a study conducted to evaluate pre-merger and post-merger institutional performance was undertaken and the finding shows that an institutional merger brought institutional effec-tiveness [14]. What is emerging is that while developed countries have moved on to mod-ern cadastral systems, majority of the countries in Africa are still stuck in the old tradi-tional systems although a few countries have embarked on the process of modernizing their cadaster in line with the internationally recognized benchmarks. These include; Rwanda, South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Ghana, and Ethiopia just to mention a few [15,16]. Among these, Rwanda is the only country in Africa that has succeeded in documenting all rights to land based on the Torrens System [17]. Responsibility of all cadastral system activities are given to a single institution, called Office of the Registrar of Land Ti-tles. The system follows the international rules and standards such as cadaster 2014, and LADM [18]. According to GoR Land Administration Manual [18], the implementation of modern cadastral system in Rwanda has been started in 2007. In the first two years, prep-aration works, including public consultations and the development of the legal, institu-tional, and policy frameworks were embarked. On 2009, the actual a fully-fledged Sys-tematic Land Registration (SLR) work were started and completed in 2013 through nine stages: (1) Notification of LTR area and local information campaign; (2) Recruitment and training of local staff; (3) Parcel demarcation; (4) Land adjudication; (5) Data entry and checking; (6) Parcel digitization; (7) Objections and corrections; (8) Lease preparation; (9) Lease issuance. In realizing this registration, Rwanda has engaged the private sector in some specified cadastral activities. The cadastral system has been a very ambitious but also very successful. With this trend, all parcels that account 10.67 million are registered in less than 5 years. For this successful achievement, the London-based trade organization British Expertise awarded certificate of recognition being an Outstanding International Development Project. In this regard, the 2020 BD [19] report ranked Rwandan cadastral system third in the world. In the case of cadastral system of South Africa, it is one of the best and most reliable systems. It accurately defined the boundaries of properties, and the positions of rights affecting those properties [20]. Responsibility for cadastral system falls under the Department of Land Affairs [15]. The primary function of the cadastral system in South Africa is to define (delineate and document) ownership rights. According to the Land Audit Report [20] of South Africa, 94% of the total land in the country is registered digitally in the Deeds Office. In this regard, it can be said that much efforts has been in-vested in to overcoming the problems experienced in many developing countries where lack of cadastral information hinders development. Those illustrative cases show that the theory of merger is becoming acceptable for its effective performance.
