As Cadasta Co-Founder and Chief Program Officer Frank Pichel begins a new chapter in his career, we asked him for his thoughts and perspectives on his seven years with Cadasta and the future of technology-enabled land tenure.
Q: Being a co-founder, you have witnessed tremendous change and growth at Cadasta. What would you say is your favorite memory or experience at Cadasta that captures the organization’s unique mission and spirit?
When thinking back on my favorite Cadasta memories, there are too many to count. An emblematic example comes to mind in our partner Green Advocates International (GAI), working to document attacks, reprisals, and killings of Frontline Grassroots Defenders in Liberia. We have had a long history of collaboration, much of it remote during the “COVID era.” Early in 2022, we finally had an opportunity to work together in person. In reviewing the progress made by GAI, they shared how they had developed their own maps, forms, and data review processes using Cadasta tools across a range of projects. As GAI staff member Henry Kwitty said, “We realized all our data is spatial.” Seeing partners take the tools and training provided and use them in ways we would never have imagined at Cadasta makes my day. As many of my colleagues know, a call with me will often involve me wanting to share my screen and show what a partner has just built with Cadasta’s tools and support.
Q: Having worked in the land rights and technology space for many years now, what gets you most excited about the future of land tenure?
What gets me most excited about the future of land rights is the number of mobile internet users in Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to grow from 28% to 39% in the next three years, according to the GSMA—the trade organization for the global mobile phone industry. Ever increasingly affordable, accessible, and powerful hardware is democratizing the ability to capture, manage, and leverage data pertaining to individual and community land information. At the same time, governments are at risk of being bypassed if services and access to data don’t evolve with citizen expectations. Unfortunately, we continue to see the availability and access to authoritative government datasets lagging.
Q: Looking back at your seven years at Cadasta, what is your proudest accomplishment and why?
My proudest accomplishment is proving that community-led, bottom-up approaches to land documentation can lead to formally recognized land rights. In the first years, we faced quite a bit of skepticism from donors, governments, and the private sector regarding the utility of locally captured data, with many noting that only “land professionals” could provide the necessary expertise to secure land rights. Since then, we’ve seen growing acceptance of collaborative approaches, with our tools being the basis for formal recognition in Brazil, Liberia, India, Tanzania, and Uganda!
Q: As you transition to your new role, what message would you like to give to Cadasta’s supporters and partners?
When we founded Cadasta in 2015, community-led, bottom-up approaches to land documentation were limited in their success, with data rarely integrated into formal land administration systems. With the launch of the World Bank and FIG paper on “Fit-for-Purpose Land Administration,” the concept gained traction but was still seen as a niche concept more fit for the development sector, not for land professionals. Seven years later, Cadasta has shown that fit-for-purpose approaches can serve as the basis for officially recognizing land claims. Our projects in India, Brazil, Uganda, Tanzania, and elsewhere have proved that combining modern technology with bottom-up approaches is an efficient and cost-effective way to document rights at the local and national levels. Our tools and approach have led to the formalization of land rights for thousands of vulnerable communities in a matter of months, as opposed to years, at a fraction of the cost. It has been a highlight of my career to be at the forefront of this movement and show that fit-for-purpose approaches do indeed work. None of this would have been possible without the flexibility and perseverance of Cadasta’s staff, partners, and supporters.