Experts have asked the Lagos State governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, to leverage block-chain technology in order to address the infrastructural deficit in Lagos.
The experts highlighted the benefits of block-chain technology in segments such as the Lagos land registry and housing in the state.
John Macomber, a senior lecturer in Finance at the Harvard Business School, said at the Lagos State Infrastructure Roundtable, that cities across the world were increasingly looking to new technologies to address critical aspects of develop.
Investors, he said, are attracted more to the cities than they are to rural areas because of the opportunities they hold for investment returns. Also, governments around the world are beginning to see three trends emerge namely resource scarcity as revenues dwindle, massive urbanisation as more people migrate to the cities, and leaders are at a loss on the best ways to tackle the many problems.
The major attraction cities such like Lagos hold for investors includes they account for 70 percent of total GDPs in the world; they are a political unit that can act faster, and investors understand investing in city scale.
Blockchain refers to a type of data structure that enables identifying and tracking transactions digitally and sharing this information across a distributed network of computers, creating in a sense a distributed trust network.
The Dubai Land Department claims to be the first government entity to adopt blockchain technology. Andrew Nervin, Partner in PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) said Lagos State was in pole position in sub-Saharan Africa to leapfrog the technology and reform its land registry.
“We are totally capable of implementing blockchain in Lagos. I do not see anything stopping us from doing so. We have the talent here,” Nervin said.
The people at the grassroots will be the main beneficiaries of a blockchain powered land registry, he said. Addressing the land registry means that the process becomes less cumbersome which has direct impact on the price of land and housing in the state.
It also means that the mortgage system in the state will be revived, according to Demola Shogunle, CEO of Stanbic IBTC Bank.
One of the drawbacks in implementing blockchain in the country has been the slow pace of the regulators, especially the Central Bank of Nigeria.
“Banks here are highly regulated,” said Shogunle. “We are still trying to maintain synergy with the regulator in terms of blockchain. They need to be carried along.”
The Lagos State government, he noted, need no persuasion in embracing the technology implementing blockchain changes the dynamics. It will help the government know the number of people that are paying tax and who are linked to the BVN, he said.
“It gives an idea if you want to model the cash flow in the state,” Shogunle said.
