Nigerian startup HouseAfrica, which has developed Africa’s first blockchain-based land and property registry, has partnered the Nigeria Mortgage Refinance Company (NMRC) to help it scale further.
Formed in May 2018 to tackle problems around land ownership that lead to duplicate land titles and illegal sales, as well as low access to mortgages, HouseAfrica provides an immutable ledger alongside a visual map reference, ensuring the integrity of land titles and increasing access to credit.
The startup, which took part in last year’s Startupbootcamp AfriTech accelerator in Cape Town and pitched at Africa Startup Summit in Kigali in February, helps reduce the time it takes for banks, lawyers and other stakeholders to query and register land titles.
It has now partnered the NMRC to deploy a digital land and property title authentication and verification system called PropVat, which will make it possible for individuals and organisations likes financial institutions to authenticate, validate or confirm the value of any property or land across Nigeria and ultimately increase the amount of mortgage financing transactions in Nigeria.
“The partnership will help to unlock trapped assets and capital in residential real estate valued at between US$300 billion and US$900 billion, and then wealth creation through increased access to credit and growth in mortgage penetration by as much as three to five per cent of GDP over a five-to-10-year period,” said Nnamdi Uba, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of HouseAfrica.
