Losamills Consult, a privately-owned land surveying and engineering company based in Ghana, has recognised the potential for the integration of high-level technology in infrastructure development in West Africa.
The firm said it had been calling for greater government support for land demarcation and allocation systems to attract foreign investment.
About 90 per cent of rural land in Africa is not formally documented, making it vulnerable to land-grabbing and expropriation.
Weak property rights result in communal clashes and targeted killings and only four per cent of African countries have mapped private land in capital cities, meaning that most of the land is susceptible to vested interests from leaders and the urban elite as land mapping and surveying is often overlooked.
Losamills Consult is leveraging technology to reduce barriers to surveying and contribute to industrialisation and regional stability.
Its Chief Executive Officer, Samuel Larbi Darko, in an interview with AfricaLive.net, explained, “I had the vision of starting this company back in my school-going days. There were only a handful of entities of its kind in Ghana at the time, so I knew there would be demand.”
He added, “Losamills carries out location analytics to help the country in all its land-related projects. We do this by helping the government locate where exactly projects can or should be implemented. Before any project starts, our land surveyors (geomatic engineers) are the first professionals on-site to determine the exact land boundaries of the project.”
According to Losamills, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is creating new ways of catering to societal needs and improving the speed, quality and cost of delivering value. From self-driving cars and automated flight systems to navigation equipment and drones, societies and industries are going through a time of unprecedented technological change.
The land mapping and surveying sector, which serves engineering, infrastructure development and environmental conservation projects, is one such industry that has been transformed in the early days of the 4IR.
